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The  Private  Life 

Lord    Beauprd 
The  Visits 


BY 


HENRY    JAMES 


NEW    YORK 
HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

1893 


Copyright,  1893,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 

All  rights  reserved. 


CONTENTS 
j$t 

PAGE 

THE    PRIVATE   LIFE 3 

LORD  BEAUPRE .79 

THE  VISITS i99 


673(147 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 


THE   PRIVATE   LIFE 

WE  talked  of  London,  face  to  face  with 
a  great  bristling,  primeval  glacier.  The 
hour  and  the  scene  were  one  of  those  impres- 
sions which  make  up  a  little,  in  Switzer- 
land, for  the  modern  indignity  of  travel — 
the  promiscuities  and  vulgarities,  the  sta- 
tion and  the  hotel,  the  gregarious  patience, 
the  struggle  for  a  scrappy  attention,  the 
reduction  to  a  numbered  state.  The 
high  valley  was  pink  with  the  mountain 
rose,  the  cool  air  as  fresh  as  if  the  world 
were  young.  There  was  a  faint  flush  of 
afternoon  on  undiminished  snows,  and  the 
fraternizing  tinkle  of  the  unseen  cattle 
came  to  us  with  a  cropped  and  sun- 
warmed  odor.  The  balconied  inn  stood 
on  the  very  neck  of  the  sweetest  pass 
in  the  Oberland,  and  for  a  week  we  had 
had  company  and  weather.  This  was 


4  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

felt  to  be  great  luck,  for  one  would  have 
made  up  for  the  other  had  either  been  bad. 
The  weather  certainly  would  have  made 
up  for  the  company ;  but  it  was  not  sub- 
jected to  this  tax,  for  we  had  by  a  happy 
chance  the  fleur  des  pois :  Lord  and  Lady 
Mellifont,  Clare  Vawdrey,  the  greatest  (in 
the  opinion  of  many)  of  our  literary  glories, 
and  Blanche  Adney,  the  greatest  (in  the 
opinion  of  all)  of  our  theatrical.  I  mention 
these  first,  because  they  were  just  the  peo- 
ple whom  in  London,  at  that  time,  people 
tried  to  "  get."  People  endeavored  to 
"book"  them  six  weeks  ahead,  yet  on  this 
occasion  we  had  come  in  for  them,  we  had 
all  come  in  for  each  other,  without  the  least 
wire-pulling.  A  turn  of  the  game  had 
pitched  us  together,  the  last  of  August,  and 
we  recognized  our  luck  by  remaining  so, 
under  protection  of  the  barometer.  When 
the  golden  days  were  over — that  would 
come  soon  enough — we  should  wind  down 
opposite  sides  of  the  pass  and  disappear 
over  the  crest  of  surrounding  heights.  We 
were  of  the  same  general  communion,  we 
participated  in  the  same  miscellaneous  pub- 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  5 

licity.  We  met,  in  London,  with  irregular 
frequency ;  we  were  more  or  less  governed 
by  the  laws  and  the  language,  the  traditions 
and  the  shibboleths  of  the  same  dense 
social  state.  I  think  all  of  us,  even  the 
ladies,  "did"  something,  though  we  pre- 
tended we  didn't  when  it  was  mentioned. 
Such  things  are  not  mentioned  indeed  in 
London,  but  it  was  our  innocent  pleasure 
to  be  different  here.  There  had  to  be  some 
way  to  show  the  difference,  inasmuch  as 
we  were  under  the  impression  that  this  was 
our  annual  holiday.  We  felt  at  any  rate 
that  the  conditions  were  more  human  than 
in  London,  or  that  at  least  we  ourselves 
were.  We  were  frank  about  this,  we  talked 
about  it :  it  was  what  we  were  talking  about 
as  we  looked  at  the  flushing  glacier,  just  as 
some  one  called  attention  to  the  prolonged 
absence  of  Lord  Mellifont  and  Mrs.  Adney. 
We  were  seated  on  the  terrace  of  the  inn, 
where  there  were  benches  and  little  tables, 
and  those  of  us  who  were  most  bent  on 
proving  that  we  had  returned  to  nature 
were,  in  the  queer  Germanic  fashion,  having 
coffee  before  meat. 


6  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

The  remark  about  the  absence  of  our 
two  companions  was  not  taken  up,  not  even 
by  Lady  Mellifont,  not  even  by  little  Ad- 
ney,  the  fond  composer,  for  it  had  been 
dropped  only  in  the  briefest  intermission  of 
Clare  Vawdrey's  talk.  (This  celebrity  was 
"Clarence"  only  on  the  title-page.)  It 
was  just  that  revelation  of  our  being  after 
all  human  that  was  his  theme.  He  asked 
the  company  whether,  candidly,  every  one 
hadn't  been  tempted  to  say  to  every  one 
else,  "  I  had  no  idea  you  were  really  so 
nice."  I  had  had,  for  my  part,  an  idea  that 
he  was,  and  even  a  good  deal  nicer,  but  that 
was  too  complicated  to  go  into  then,  be- 
sides it  is  exactly  my  story.  There  was  a 
general  understanding  among  us  that  when 
Vawdrey  talked  we  should  be  silent,  and 
not,  oddly  enough,  because  he  at  all  ex- 
pected it.  He  didn't,  for  of  all  abundant 
talkers  he  was  the  most  unconscious,  the 
least  greedy  and  professional.  It  was  rather 
the  religion  of  the  host,  of  the  hostess,  that 
prevailed  among  us ;  it  was  their  own  idea, 
but  they  always  looked  for  a  listening  circle 
when  the  great  novelist  dined  with  them. 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  7 

On  the  occasion  I  allude  to  there  was 
probably  no  one  present  with  whom,  in 
London,  he  had  not  dined,  and  we  felt  the 
force  of  this  habit.  He  had  dined  even 
with  me  ;  and  on  the  evening  of  that  din- 
ner, as  on  this  Alpine  afternoon,  I  had  been 
at  no  pains  to  hold  my  tongue,  absorbed 
as  I  inveterately  was  in  a  study  of  the 
question  which  always  rose  before  me,  to 
such  a  height,  in  his  fair,  square,  strong 
stature. 

This  question  was  all  the  more  torment- 
ing that  he  never  suspected  himself  (I  am 
sure)  of  imposing  it,  any  more  than  he  had 
ever  observed  that  every  day  of  his  life 
every  one  listened  to  him  at  dinner.  He 
used  to  be  called  "  subjective "  in  the 
weekly  papers,  but  in  society  no  distinguish- 
ed man  could  have  been  less  so.  He  never 
talked  about  himself;  and  this  was  a  topic 
on  which,  though  it  would  have  been  tre- 
mendously worthy  of  him,  he  apparently 
never  even  reflected.  He  had  his  hours 
and  his  habits,  his  tailor  and  his  hatter,  his 
hygiene  and  his  particular  wine,  but  all 
these  things  together  never  made  up  an 


8  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

attitude.  Yet  they  constituted  the  only 
attitude  he  ever  adopted,  and  it  was  easy 
for  him  to  refer  to  our  being  "  nicer ''  abroad 
than  at  home.  He  was  exempt  from  varia- 
tions, and  not  a  shade  either  less  or  more 
nice  in  one  place  than  in  another.  He 
differed  from  other  people,  but  never  from 
himself  (save  in  the  extraordinary  sense 
which  I  will  presently  explain),  and  struck 
me  as  having  neither  moods  nor  sensibilities 
nor  preferences.  He  might  have  been  al- 
ways in  the  same  company,  so  far  as  he 
recognized  any  influence  from  age  or  con- 
dition or  sex :  he  addressed  himself  to 
women  exactly  as  he  addressed  himself  to 
men,  and  gossiped  with  all  men  alike,  talk- 
ing no  better  to  clever  folk  than  to  dull.  I 
used  to  feel  a  despair  at  his  way  of  liking 
one  subject — so  far  as  I  could  tell— pre- 
cisely as  much  as  another :  there  were  some 
I  hated  so  myself.  I  never  found  him  any- 
thing but  loud  and  cheerful  and  copious,  and 
I  never  heard  him  utter  a  paradox  or  ex- 
press a  shade  or  play  with  an  idea.  That 
fancy  about  our  being  "  human  ';  was,  in  his 
conversation,  quite  an  exceptional  flight. 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  g 

His  opinions  were  sound  and  second-rate, 
and  of  his  perceptions  it  was  too  mystify- 
ing to  think.  I  envied  him  his  magnificent 
health. 

Vawdrey  had  marched,  with  his  even 
pace  and  his  perfectly  good  conscience,  into 
the  flat  country  of  anecdote,  where  stories 
are  visible  from  afar  like  windmills  and 
signposts  ;  but  I  observed  after  a  little  that 
Lady  Mellifont's  attention  wandered.  I 
happened  to  be  sitting  next  her.  I  noticed 
that  her  eyes  rambled  a  little  anxiously 
over  the  lower  slopes  of  the  mountains. 
At  last,  after  looking  at  her  watch,  she 
said  to  me :  "  Do  you  know  where  they 
went?" 

"  Do  you  mean  Mrs.  Adney  and  Lord 
Mellifont?" 

"  Lord  Mellifont  and  Mrs.  Adney."  Her 
ladyship's  speech  seemed — unconsciously 
indeed — to  correct  me,  but  it  didn't  occur 
to  me  that  this  was  because  she  was  jealous. 
I  imputed  to  her  no  such  vulgar  sentiment ; 
in  the  first  place  because  I  liked  her,  and 
in  the  second  because  it  would  always 
occur  to  one  quickly  that  it  was  right,  in 


10  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

any  connection,  to  put  Lord  Mellifont  first. 
He  was  first  —  extraordinarily  first.  I 
don't  say  greatest  or  wisest  or  most  re- 
nowned, but  essentially  at  the  top  of  the 
list  and  the  head  of  the  table.  That  is  a 
position  by  itself,  and  his  wife  was  naturally 
accustomed  to  see  him  in  it.  My  phrase 
had  sounded  as  if  Mrs.  Adney  had  taken 
him ;  but  it  was  not  possible  for  him  to  be 
taken — he  only  took.  No  one,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  could  know  this  better  than  Lady 
Mellifont.  I  had  originally  been  rather 
afraid  of  her,  thinking  her,  with  her  stiff 
silences  and  the  extreme  blackness  of  al- 
most everything  that  made  up  her  person, 
somewhat  hard,  even  a  little  saturnine. 
Her  paleness  seemed  slightly  gray,  and  her 
glossy  black  hair  metallic,  like  the  brooches 
and  bands  and  combs  with  which  it  was 
inveterately  adorned.  She  was  in  perpetual 
mourning,  and  wore  numberless  ornaments 
of  jet  and  onyx,  a  thousand  clicking  chains 
and  bugles  and  beads.  I  had  heard  Mrs. 
Adney  call  her  the  queen  of  night,  and  the 
term  was  descriptive  if  you  understood  that 
the  night  was  cloudy.  She  had  a  secret, 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  n 

and  if  you  didn't  find  it  out  as  you  knew 
her  better,  you  at  least  perceived  that  she 
was  gentle  and  unaffected  and  limited,  and 
also  rather  submissively  sad.  She  was  like 
a  woman  with  a  painless  malady.  I  told 
her  that  I  had  merely  seen  her  husband  and 
his  companion  stroll  down  the  glen  together 
about  an  hour  before,  and  suggested  that 
Mr.  Adney  would  perhaps  know  something 
of  their  intentions. 

Vincent  Adney,  who,  though  he  was  fifty 
years  old,  looked  like  a  good  little  boy  on 
whom  it  had  been  impressed  that  children 
should  not  talk  before  company,  acquitted 
himself  with  remarkable  simplicity  and  taste 
of  the  position  of  husband  of  a  great  expo- 
nent of  comedy.  When  all  was  said  about 
her  making  it  easy  for  him,  one  couldn't 
help  admiring  the  charmed  affection  with 
which  he  took  everything  for  granted.  It 
is  difficult  for  a  husband  who  is  not  on  the 
stage,  or  at  least  in  the  theatre,  to  be  grace- 
ful about  a  wife  who  is ;  but  Adney  was 
more  than  graceful — he  was  exquisite,  he 
was  inspired.  He  set  his  beloved  to  music  ; 
and  you  remember  how  genuine  his  music 


12  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

could  be— the  only  English  compositions  I 
ever  saw  a  foreigner  take  an  interest  in. 
His  wife  was  in  them,  somewhere,  always  ; 
they  were  like  a  free,  rich  translation  of  the 
impression  she  produced.  She  seemed,  as 
one  listened,  to  pass  laughing,  with  loosened 
hair  across  the  scene.  He  had  been  only 
a  little  fiddler  at  her  theatre,  always  in  his 
place  during  the  acts  ;  but  she  had  made 
him  something  rare  and  misunderstood. 
Their  superiority  had  become  a  kind  of 
partnership,  and  their  happiness  was  a  part 
of  the  happiness  of  their  friends.  Adney's 
one  discomfort  was  that  he  couldn't  write  a 
play  for  his  wife,  and  the  only  way  he  med- 
dled with  her  affairs  was  by  asking  impos- 
sible people  if  they  couldn't. 

Lady  Mellifont,  after  looking  across  at 
him  a  moment,  remarked  to  me  that  she 
would  rather  not  put  any  question  to 
him.  She  added  the  next  minute :  "  I 
had  rather  people  shouldn't  see  I'm  nerv- 
ous." 

11  Are  you  nervous  ?" 

"  I  always  become  so  if  my  husband  is 
away  from  me  for  any  time." 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  !3 

"  Do  you  imagine  something  has  hap- 
pened to  him  ?" 

"  Yes,  always.    Of  course  I'm  used  to  it." 

"  Do  you  mean  his  tumbling  over  preci- 
pices—-that  sort  of  thing  ?" 

"I  don't  know  exactly  what  it  is;  it's  the 
general  sense  that  he'll  never  come  back." 

She  said  so  much  and  kept  back  so  much 
that  the  only  way  to  treat  the  condition  she 
referred  to  seemed  the  jocular.  "  Surely 
he'll  never  forsake  you  !"  I  laughed. 

She  looked  at  the  ground  a  moment. 
"  Oh,  at  bottom  I'm  easy." 

"  Nothing  can  ever  happen  to  a  man  so 
accomplished,  so  infallible,  so  armed  at  all 
points,"  I  went  on,  encouragingly. 

"  Oh,  you  don't  know  how  he's  armed  !" 
she  exclaimed,  with  such  an  odd  quaver 
that  I  could  account  for  it  only  by  her  being 
nervous.  This  idea  was  confirmed  by  her 
moving  just  afterwards,  changing  her  seat 
rather  potntlessly,  not  as  if  to  cut  our  con- 
versation short,  but  because  she  was  in  a 
fidget.  I  couldn't  know  what  was  the  mat- 
ter with  her,  but  I  was  presently  relieved  to 
see  Mrs.  Adney  come  towards  us.  She  had 


14  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

in  her  hand  a  big  bunch  of  wild  flowers,  but 
she  was  not  closely  attended  by  Lord  Melli- 
font.  I  quickly  saw,  however,  that  she  had 
no  disaster  to  announce ;  yet,  as  I  knew 
there  was  a  question  Lady  Mellifont  would 
like  to  hear  answered,  but  did  not  wish  to 
ask,  I  expressed  to  her  immediately  the 
hope  that  his  lordship  had  not  remained  in 
a  crevasse. 

"Oh,  no;  he  left  me  but  three  minutes 
ago.  He  has  gone  into  the  house."  Blanche 
Adney  rested  her  eyes  on  mine  an  instant — 
a  mode  of  intercourse  to  which  no  man,  for 
himself,  could  ever  object.  The  interest, 
on  this  occasion,  was  quickened  by  the  par- 
ticular thing  the  eyes  happened  to  say. 
What  they  usually  said  was  only,  "  Oh,  yes, 
I'm  charming,  I  know,  but  don't  make  a 
fuss  about  it.  I  only  want  a  new  part — I 
do,  I  do  !"  At  present  they  added,  dimly, 
surreptitiously,  and  of  course  sweetly — for 
that  was  the  way  they  did  everything  :  "  It's 
all  right ;  but  something  did  happen.  Per- 
haps I'll  tell  you  later."  She  turned  to 
Lady  Mellifont,  and  the  transition  to  simple 
gayety  suggested  her  mastery  of  her  profes- 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  I5 

sion.     "  I've  brought  him  safe  ;  we  had  a 
charming  walk." 

"  I'm  so  very  glad,"  returned  Lady  Melli- 
font,with  her  faint  smile,  continuing  vaguely, 
as  she  got  up, "  he  must  have  gone  to  dress  for 
dinner.  Isn't  it  rather  near  ?"  She  moved 
away,  to  the  hotel,  in  her  leave-taking,  sim- 
plifying fashion,  and  the  rest  of  us,  at  the 
mention  of  dinner,  looked  at  each  other's 
watches,  as  if  to  shift  the  responsibility  of 
such  grossness.  The  head -waiter,  essen- 
tially, like  all  head -waiters,  a  man  of  the 
world,  allowed  us  hours  and  places  of  our 
own,  so  that  in  the  evening,  apart  under  the 
lamp,  we  formed  a  compact,  an  indulged  lit- 
tle circle.  But  it  was  only  the  Mellifonts 
who  "dressed  "  and  as  to  whom  it  was  recog- 
nized that  they  naturally  would  dress  :  she 
in  exactly  the  same  manner  as  on  any  other 
evening  of  her  ceremonious  existence  (she 
was  not  a  woman  whose  habits  could  take 
account  of  anything  so  mutable  as  fitness); 
and  he,  on  the  other  hand,  with  remarkable 
adjustment  and  suitability.  He  was  almost 
as  much  a  man  of  the  world  as  the  head- 
waiter,  and  spoke  almost  as  many  languages ; 


16  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

but  he  abstained  from  courting  a  comparison 
of  dress-coats  and  white  waistcoats,  analyz- 
ing the  occasion  in  a  much  finer  way — into 
black  velvet  and  blue  velvet  and  brown  vel- 
vet, for  instance,  into  delicate  harmonies  of 
necktie  and  subtle  informalities  of  shirt. 
He  had  a  costume  for  every  function  and  a 
moral  for  every  costume  ;  and  his  functions 
and  costumes  and  morals  were  ever  a  part 
of  the  amusement  of  life — a  part  at  any 
rate  of  its  beauty  and  romance — for  an  im- 
mense circle  of  spectators.  For  his  partic- 
ular friends  indeed  these  things  were  more 
than  an  amusement;  they  were  a  topic,  a  so- 
cial support,  and  of  course,  in  addition,  a  sub- 
ject of  perpetual  suspense.  If  his  wife  had 
not  been  present  before  dinner  they  were 
what  the  rest  of  us  probably  would  have 
been  putting  our  heads  together  about. 

Clare  Vawdrey  had  a  fund  of  anecdote 
on  the  whole  question  :  he  had  known  Lord 
Mellifont  almost  from  the  beginning.  It 
was  a  peculiarity  of  this  nobleman  that 
there  could  be  no  conversation  about  him 
that  didn't  instantly  take  the  form  of  anec- 
dote, and  a  still  further  distinction  that 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  1 7 

there  could  apparently  be  no  anecdote  that 
was  not  on  the  whole  to  his  honor.  If  he 
had  come  into  a  room  at  any  moment,  peo- 
ple might  have  said  frankly,  "  Of  course  we 
were  telling  stories  about  you  !"  As  con- 
sciences go,  in  London,  the  general  con- 
science would  have  been  good.  Moreover, 
it  would  have  been  impossible  to  imagine 
his  taking  such  a  tribute  otherwise  than 
amiably,  for  he  was  always  as  unperturbed 
as  an  actor  with  the  right  cue.  He  had 
never  in  his  life  needed  the  prompter — his 
very  embarrassments  had  been  rehearsed. 
For  myself,  when  he  was  talked  about  I  al- 
ways had  an  odd  impression  that  we  were 
speaking  of  the  dead — it  was  with  that  pe- 
culiar accumulation  of  relish.  His  reputa- 
tion was  a  kind  of  gilded  obelisk,  as  if  he 
had  been  buried  beneath  it ;  the  body  of 
legend  and  reminiscence,  of  which  he  was 
to  be  the  subject,  had  crystallized  in  ad- 
vance. 

This  ambiguity  sprang,  I  suppose,  from 
the  fact  that  the  mere  sound  of  his  name 
and  air  of  his  person,  the  general  expecta- 
tion he  created,  were,  somehow,  too  exalted 


1 8  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

to  be  verified.  The  experience  of  his  ur- 
banity always  came  later ;  the  prefigure- 
ment,  the  legend  paled  before  the  reality. 
I  remember  that  on  the  evening  I  refer  to 
the  reality  was  particularly  operative.  The 
handsomest  man  of  his  period  could  never 
have  looked  better,  and  he  sat  among  us 
like  a  bland  conductor  controlling  by  an 
harmonious  play  of  arm  an  orchestra  still  a 
little  rough.  He  directed  the  conversation 
by  gestures  as  irresistible  as  they  were 
vague ;  one  felt  as  if  without  him  it  wouldn't 
have  had  anything  to  call  a  tone.  This  was 
essentially  what  he  contributed  to  any  oc- 
casion— what  he  contributed  above  all  to 
English  public  life.  He  pervaded  it,  he 
colored  it,  he  embellished  it,  and  without 
him  it  would  scarcely  have  had  a  vocabu- 
lary ;  certainly  it  would  not  have  had  a 
style,  for  a  style  was  what  it  had  in  having 
Lord  Mellifont.  He  was  a  style.  I  was 
freshly  struck  with  it  as,  in  the  salle  a  man- 
ger of  the  little  Swiss  inn,  we  resigned  our- 
selves to  inevitable  veal.  Confronted  with 
his  form  (I  must  parenthesize  that  it  was 
not  confronted  much),  Clare  Vawdrey's  talk 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  Zg 

suggested  the  reporter  contrasted  with  the 
bard.  It  was  interesting  to  watch  the  shock 
of  characters  from  which,  of  an  evening,  so 
much  would  be  expected.  There  was,  how- 
ever, no  concussion — it  was  all  muffled  and 
minimized  in  Lord  Mellifont's  tact.  It  was 
rudimentary  with  him  to  find  the  solution 
of  such  a  problem  in  playing  the  host,  as- 
suming responsibilities  which  carried  with 
them  their  sacrifice.  He  had,  indeed,  never 
been  a  guest  in  his  life ;  he  was  the  host, 
the  patron,  the  moderator  at  every  board. 
If  there  was  a  defect  in  his  manner  (and  I 
suggest  it  under  my  breath),  it  was  that  he 
had  a  little  more  art  than  any  conjunction — 
even  the  most  complicated — could  possibly 
require.  At  any  rate,  one  made  one's  re- 
flections in  noticing  how  the  accomplished 
peer  handled  the  situation,  and  how  the 
sturdy  man  of  letters  was  unconscious  that 
the  situation  (and  least  of  all  he  himself  as 
part  of  it)  was  handled.  Lord  Mellifont 
poured  forth  treasures  of  tact,  and  Clare 
Vawdrey  never  dreamed  he  was  doing  it. 

Vawdrey  had  no  suspicion  of  any  such 
precaution,  even  when  Blanche  Aclney  asked 


20  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

him  if  he  saw  yet  their  third  act — an  inqui- 
ry into  which  she  introduced  a  subtlety  of 
her  own.  She  had  a  theory  that  he  was  to 
write  her  a  play,  and  that  the  heroine,  if  he 
would  only  do  his  duty,  would  be  the  part 
for  which  she  had  immemorially  longed. 
She  was  forty  years  old  (this  could  be  no 
secret  to  thosr  who  had  admired  her  from 
the  first),  and  she  could  now  reach  out  her 
hand  and  touch  her  uttermost  goal.  This 
gave  a  kind  of  tragic  passion — perfect  actress 
of  comedy  as  she  was  — to  her  desire  not  to 
miss  the  great  thing.  The  years  had  passed, 
and  still  she  had  missed  it;  none  of  the 
things  she  had  done  was  the  thing  she  had 
dreamed  of,  so  that  at  present  there  was  no 
more  time  to  lose.  This  was  the  canker  in 
the  rose,  the  ache  beneath  the  smile.  It 
made  her  touching — made  her  sadness  even 
sweeter  than  her  laughter.  She  had  done 
the  old  English  and  the  new  French,  and 
had  charmed  her  generation ;  but  she  was 
haunted  by  the  vision  of  a  bigger  chance, 
of  something  truer  to  the  conditions  that 
lay  near  her.  She  was  tired  of  Sheridan 
and  she  hated  Bowdler ;  she  called  for  a 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  21 

canvas  of  a  finer  grain.  The  worst  of  it,  to 
my  sense,  was  that  she  would  never  extract 
her  modern  comedy  from  the  great  mature 
novelist,  who  was  as  incapable  of  producing 
it  as  he  was  of  threading  a  needle.  She 
coddled  him,  she  talked  to  him,  she  made 
love  to  him,  as  she  frankly  proclaimed ;  but 
she  dwelt  in  illusions — she  would  have  to 
live  and  die  with  Bowdler. 

It  is  difficult  to  be  cursory  over  this  charm- 
ing woman,  who  was  beautiful  without  beau- 
ty and  complete  with  a  dozen  deficiencies. 
The  perspective  of  the  stage  made  her  over, 
and  in  society  she  was  like  the  model  off 
the  pedestal.  She  was  the  picture  walking 
about,  which  to  the  artless  social  mind  was 
a  perpetual  surprise — a  miracle.  People 
thought  she  told  them  the  secrets  of  the 
pictorial  nature,  in  return  for  which  they 
gave  her  relaxation  and  tea.  She  told  them 
nothing  and  she  drank  the  tea ;  but  they 
had,  all  the  same,  the  best  of  the  bargain. 
Vawdrey  was  really  at  work  on  a  play ;  but 
if  he  had  begun  it  because  he  liked  her,  I 
think  he  let  it  drag  for  the  same  reason. 
He  secretly  felt  the  atrocious  difficulty — 


22  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

knew  that  from  his  hand  the  finished  piece 
would  have  received  no  active  life.  At  the 
same  time,  nothing  could  be  more  agreeable 
than  to  have  such  a  question  open  with 
Blanche  Adney,  and  from  time  to  time  he 
put  something  very  good  into  the  play.  If 
he  deceived  Mrs.  Adney,  it  was  only  because 
in  her  despair  she  was  determined  to  be  de- 
ceived. To  her  question  about  their  third 
act  he  replied  that  before  dinner  he  had 
written  a  magnificent  passage. 

"Before  dinner?"  I  said.  "Why,  cher 
maitre,  before  dinner  you  were  holding  us 
all  spellbound  on  the  terrace." 

My  words  were  a  joke,  because  I  thought 
his  had  been ;  but  for  the  first  time  that  I 
could  remember  I  perceived  a  certain  con- 
fusion in  his  face.  He  looked  at  me  hard, 
throwing  back  his  head  quickly,  the  least  bit 
like  a  horse  who  has  been  pulled  up  short. 
"Oh,  it  was  before  that,"  he  replied,  nat- 
urally enough. 

"  Before  that  you  were  playing  billiards 
with  me"  Lord  Mellifont  intimated. 

"Then  it  must  have  been  yesterday," 
said  Vawdrey. 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  23 

But  he  was  in  a  tight  place.  "  You  told 
me  this  morning  you  did  nothing  yesterday," 
the  actress  objected. 

"  I  don't  think  I  really  know  when  I  do 
things."  Vawdrey  looked  vaguely,  without 
helping  himself,  at  a  dish  that  was  offered 
him. 

"  It's  enough  if  we  know,"  smiled  Lord 
Mellifont. 

"  I  don't  believe  you've  written  a  line," 
said  Blanche  Adney. 

"  I  think  I  could  repeat  you  the  scene." 
Vawdrey  helped  himself  to  haricots  verts. 

"  Oh,  do !  oh,  do !"  two  or  three  of  us 
cried. 

"  After  dinner,  in  the  salon  ;  it  will  be  an 
immense  r&gal"  Lord  Mellifont  declared. 

"I'm  not  sure,  but  I'll  try,"  Vawdrey 
went  on. 

"  Oh,  you  lovely  man !"  exclaimed  the 
actress,  who  was  practising  Americanisms, 
being  resigned  even  to  an  American  com- 
edy. 

"  But  there  must  be  this  condition,"  said 
Vawdrey :  "  you  must  make  your  husband 
play."  ' 


24  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

"  Play  while  you're  reading  ?     Never  !" 

"  I've  too  much  vanity,"  said  Adney. 

Lord  Mellifont distinguished  him.  "You 
must  give  us  the  overture  before  the  curtain 
rises.  That's  a  peculiarly  delightful  mo- 
ment." 

"  I  sha'n't  read— I  shall  just  speak,"  said 
Vawdrey. 

"Better  still;  let  me  go  and  get  your 
manuscript,"  the  actress  suggested. 

Vawdrey  replied  that  the  manuscript 
didn't  matter ;  but  an  hour  later,  in  the  sa- 
lon, we  wished  he  might  have  had  it.  We 
sat  expectant,  still  under  the  spell  of  Ad- 
ney's  violin.  His  wife,  in  the  foreground 
on  an  ottoman,  was  all  impatience  and  pro- 
file, and  Lord  Mellifont,  in  the  chair  —  it 
was  always  the  chair,  Lord  Mellifont's— 
made  our  grateful  little  group  feel  like  a 
social  science  congress  or  a  distribution  of 
prizes.  Suddenly,  instead  of  beginning,  our 
tame  lion  began  to  roar  out  of  tune — he  had 
clean  forgotten  every  word.  He  was  very 
sorry,  but  the  lines  absolutely  wouldn't  come 
to  him ;  he  was  utterly  ashamed,  but  his 
memory  was  a  blank.  He  didn't  look  in 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  25 

the  least  ashamed  —  Vawdrey  had  never 
looked  ashamed  in  his  life ;  he  was  only 
imperturbably  and  merrily  natural.  He 
protested  that  he  had  never  expected  to 
make  such  a  fool  of  himself,  but  we  felt 
that  this  wouldn't  prevent  the  incident  from 
taking  its  place  among  his  jolliest  reminis- 
cences. It  was  only  we  who  were  humili- 
ated, as  if  he  had  played  us  a  premeditated 
trick.  This  was  an  occasion,  if  ever,  for 
Lord  Mellifont's  tact,  which  descended  on 
us  all  like  balm.  He  told  us,  in  his  charm- 
ing, artistic  way,  his  way  of  bridging  over 
arid  intervals  (he  had  a  debit — there  was 
nothing  to  approach  it  in  England  —  like 
the  actors  of  the  Comedie  Franchise),  of  his 
own  collapse  on  a  momentous  occasion,  the 
delivery  of  an  address  to  a  mighty  multi- 
tude, when,  finding  he  had  forgotten  his 
memoranda,  he  fumbled  on  the  terrible  plat- 
form, the  cynosure  of  every  eye,  fumbled 
vainly  in  irreproachable  pockets  for  indis- 
pensable notes.  But  the  point  of  his  story 
was  finer  than  that  of  Vawdrey's  pleasantry; 
for  he  sketched  with  a  few  light  gestures  the 
brilliancy  of  a  performance  which  had  risen 


26  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

superior  to  embarrassment  —  had  resolved 
itself,  we  were  left  to  divine,  into  an  effort 
recognized  at  the  moment  as  not  absolutely 
a  blot  on  what  the  public  was  so  good  as  to 
call  his  reputation. 

"  Play  up — play  up  !"  cried  Blanche  Ad- 
ney,  tapping  her  husband,  and  remembering 
how,  on  the  stage,  a  contretemps  is  always 
drowned  in  music.  Adney  threw  himself 
upon  his  fiddle,  and  I  said  to  Clare  Vaw- 
drey  that  his  mistake  could  easily  be  cor- 
rected by  his  sending  for  the  manuscript. 
If  he  would  tell  me  where  it  was  I  would  im- 
mediately fetch  it  from  his  room.  To  this 
he  replied,  "  My  dear  fellow,  I'm  afraid  there 
is  no  manuscript." 

"  Then  you've  not  written  anything  ?" 

"  I'll  write  it  to-morrow." 

"  Ah,  you  trifle  with  us !"  I  said,  in  much 
mystification. 

Vawdrey  hesitated  an  instant.  "  If  there 
is  anything,  you'll  find  it  on  my  table." 

At  this  moment  one  of  the  others  spoke 
to  him,  and  Lady  Mellifont  remarked  audi- 
bly, as  if  to  correct  gently  our  want  of  con- 
sideration, that  Mr.  Adney  was  playing  some- 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  27 

thing  very  beautiful.  I  had  noticed  before 
that  she  appeared  extremely  fond  of  music ; 
she  always  listened  to  it  in  a  hushed  trans- 
port. Vawdrey's  attention  was  drawn  away, 
but  it  didn't  seem  to  me  that  the  words  he 
had  just  dropped  constituted  a  definite  per- 
mission to  go  to  his  room.  Moreover,  I 
wanted  to  speak  to  Blanche  Adney ;  I  had 
something  to  ask  her.  I  had  to  await  my 
chance,  however,  as  we  remained  silent 
awhile  for  her  husband,  after  which  the 
conversation  became  general.  It  was  our 
habit  to  go  to  bed  early,  but  there  was  still 
a  little  of  the  evening  left.  Before  it  quite 
waned  I  found  an  opportunity  to  tell  the 
actress  that  Vawdrey  had  given  me  leave  to 
put  my  hand  on  his  manuscript.  She  ad- 
jured me,  by  all  I  held  sacred,  to  bring  it 
immediately,  to  give  it  to  her ;  and  her  in- 
sistence was  proof  against  my  suggestion 
that  it  would  now  be  too  late  for  him  to  be- 
gin to  read ;  besides  which,  the  charm  was 
broken — the  others  wouldn't  care.  It  was 
not  too  late  for  her  to  begin  ;  therefore  I 
was  to  possess  myself,  without  more  delay, 
of  the  precious  pages.  I  told  her  she  should 


28  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

be  obeyed  in  a  moment,  but  I  wanted  her 
first  to  satisfy  my  just  curiosity.  What  had 
happened  before  dinner,  while  she  was  on 
the  hills  with  Lord  Mellifont  ? 

"  How  do  you  know  anything  happened  ?" 

"  I  saw  it  in  your  face  when  you  came 
back." 

"  And  they  call  me  an  actress  !"  cried  Mrs. 
Adney. 

"  What  do  they  call  me  1"  I  inquired. 

"You're  a  searcher  of  hearts — that  frivo- 
lous thing,  an  observer." 

"  I  wish  you'd  let  an  observer  write  you  a 
play  !"  I  broke  out. 

"  People  don't  care  for  what  you  write ; 
you'd  break  any  run  of  luck." 

"  Well,  I  see  plays  all  around  me,"  I  de- 
clared ;  "  the  air  is  full  of  them  to-night." 

"  The  air  ?  Thank  you  for  nothing  !  I 
only  wish  my  table-drawers  were." 

"  Did  he  make  love  to  you  on  the  glacier  ?" 
I  went  on. 

She  stared  ;  then  broke  into  the  gradu- 
ated ecstasy  of  her  laugh.  "  Lord  Mellifont, 
poor  dear  ?  What  a  funny  place  !  It  would 
indeed  be  the  place  for  our  love  !" 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  29 

"  Did  he  fall  into  a  crevasse  ?"  I  con- 
tinued. 

Blanche  Adney  looked  at  me  again  as  she 
had  done  for  an  instant  when  she  came  up, 
before  dinner,  with  her  hands  full  of  flowers. 
"  I  don't  know  into  what  he  fell.  I'll  tell 
you  to-morrow." 

"  He  did  come  down,  then  ?" 

"  Perhaps  he  went  up,"  she  laughed.  "  It's 
really  strange  !" 

"  All  the  more  reason  you  should  tell  me 
to-night." 

"  I  must  think  it  over ;  I  must  puzzle  it 
out." 

"  Oh,  if  you  want  conundrums,  I'll  throw 
in  another,"  I  said.  "  What's  the  matter 
with  the  master  ?" 

"  The  master  of  what  ?" 

"  Of  every  form  of  dissimulation.  Vaw- 
drey  hasn't  written  a  line." 

"  Go  and  get  his  papers,  and  we'll  see." 

"  I  don't  like  to  expose  him,"  I  said. 

"  Why  not,  if  I  expose  Lord  Mellifont  ?" 

"  Oh,  I'd  do  anything  for  that,"  I  con- 
ceded. "  But  why  should  Vawdrey  have 
made  a  false  statement  ?  It's  very  curious." 


30  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

"  It's  very  curious,"  Blanche  Adney  re- 
peated, with  a  musing  air  and  her  eyes  on 
Lord  Mellifont.  Then,  rousing  herself,  she 
added  :  "  Go  and  look  in  his  room." 

"  In  Lord  Mellifont's  ?" 

She  turned  to  me  quickly.  "That  would 
be  a  way !" 

"  A  way  to  what  ?" 

"  To  find  out— to  find  out !"  She  spoke 
gayly  and  excitedly,  but  suddenly  checked 
herself.  "We're  talking  nonsense,"  she 
said. 

"  We're  mixing  things  up,  but  I'm  struck 
with  your  idea.  Get  Lady  Mellifont  to  let 
you." 

"  Oh,  she  has  looked  !"  Mrs.  Adney  mur- 
mured, with  the  oddest  dramatic  expression. 
Then,  after  a  movement  of  her  beautiful  up- 
lifted hand,  as  if  to  brush  away  a  fantastic 
vision,  she  exclaimed,  imperiously  :  "  Bring 
me  the  scene — bring  me  the  scene  !" 

"  I  go  for  it,"  I  answered;  "  but  don't  tell 
me  I  can't  write  a  play." 

She  left  me,  but  my  errand  was  arrested 
by  the  approach  of  a  lady  who  had  produced 
a  birthday-book — we  had  been  threatened 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  31 

with  it  for  several  evenings — and  who  did 
me  the  honor  to  solicit  my  autograph.  She 
had  been  asking  the  others,  and  she  couldn't 
decently  leave  me  out.  I  could  usually  re- 
member my  name,  but  it  always  took  me 
some  time  to  recall  my  date,  and  even  when 
I  had  done  so  I  was  never  very  sure.  I 
hesitated  between  two  days,  and  I  remarked 
to  my  petitioner  that  I  would  sign  on  both 
if  it  would  give  her  any  satisfaction.  She 
said  that  surely  I  had  been  born  only  once; 
and  I  replied  of  course  that  on  the  clay  I 
made  her  acquaintance  I  had  been  born 
again.  I  mention  the  feeble  joke  only  to 
show  that,  with  the  obligatory  inspection  of 
the  other  autographs,  we  gave  some  minutes 
to  this  transaction.  The  lady  departed  with 
her  book,  and  then  I  became  aware  that  the 
company  had  dispersed.  I  was  alone  in  the 
little  salon  that  had  been  appropriated  to 
our  use.  My  first  impression  was  one  of 
disappointment :  if  Vawdrey  had  gone  to 
bed  I  didn't  wish  to  disturb  him.  While  I 
hesitated,  however,  I  recognized  that  Vaw- 
drey had  not  gone  to  bed.  A  window  was 
open,  and  the  sound  of  voices  outside  came 


32  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

in  to  me ;  Blanche  was  on  the  terrace  with 
her  dramatist,  and  they  were  talking  about 
the  stars.  I  went  to  the  window  for  a 
glimpse  —  the  Alpine  night  was  splendid. 
My  friends  had  stepped  out  together ;  the 
actress  had  picked  up  a  cloak ;  she  looked 
as  I  had  seen  her  look  in  the  wing  of  the 
theatre.  They  were  silent  awhile,  and  I 
heard  the  roar  of  a  neighboring  torrent.  I 
turned  back  into  the  room,  and  its  quiet 
lamplight  gave  me  an  idea.  Our  compan- 
ions had  dispersed— it  was  late  for  a  pas- 
toral country  —  and  we  three  should  have 
the  place  to  ourselves.  Clare  Vawdrey  had 
written  his  scene — it  was  magnificent ;  and 
his  reading  it  to  us  there,  at  such  an  hour, 
would  be  an  episode  intensely  memorable. 
I  would  bring  down  his  manuscript  and 
meet  the  two  with  it  as  they  came  in. 

I  quitted  the  salon  for  this  purpose ;  I 
had  been  in  Vawdrey's  room  and  knew  it 
was  on  the  second  floor,  the  last  in  a  long 
corridor.  A  minute  later  my  hand  was  on 
the  knob  of  his  door,  which  I  naturally 
pushed  open  without  knocking.  It  was 
equally  natural  that  in  the  absence  of  its 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  33 

occupant  the  room  should  be  dark ;  the 
more  so  as,  the  end  of  the  corridor  being  at 
that  hour  unlighted,  the  obscurity  was  not 
immediately  diminished  by  the  opening  of 
the  door.  I  was  only  aware  at  first  that  I 
had  made  no  mistake  and  that,  the  window- 
curtains  not  being  drawn,  I  was  confronted 
with  a  couple  of  vague,  starlighted  apertures. 
Their  aid,  however,  was  not  sufficient  to  en- 
able me  to  find  what  I  had  come  for,  and 
my  hand,  in  my  pocket,  was  already  on  the 
little  box  of  matches  that  I  always  carried 
for  cigarettes.  Suddenly  I  withdrew  it  with 
a  start,  uttering  an  ejaculation,  an  apology. 
I  had  entered  the  wrong  room;  a  glance 
prolonged  for  three  seconds  showed  me  a 
figure  seated  at  a  table  near  one  of  the 
windows — a  figure  I  had  at  first  taken  for  a 
travelling-rug  thrown  over  a  chair.  I  re- 
treated, with  a  sense  of  intrusion ;  but  as  I 
did  so  I  became  aware,  more  rapidly  than  it 
takes  me  to  express  it,  in  the  first  place 
that  this  was  Vawdrey's  room,  and  in  the 
second  that,  most  singularly,  Vawdrey  him- 
self sat  before  me.  Checking  myself  on  the 
threshold  I  had  a  momentary  feeling  of  be- 


34 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 


wilderment,  but  before  I  knew  it  I  had  ex- 
claimed :  "  Hullo  !  is  that  you,  Vawdrey  ?" 

He  neither  turned  nor  answered  me,  but 
my  question  received  an  immediate  and 
practical  reply  in  the  opening  of  a  door  on 
the  other  side  of  the  passage.  A  servant, 
with  a  candle,  had  come  out  of  the  opposite 
room,  and  in  this  flitting  illumination  I 
definitely  recognized  the  man  whom,  an  in- 
stant before,  I  had  to  the  best  of  my  belief 
left  below  in  conversation  with  Mrs.  Adney. 
His  back  was  half  turned  to  me,  and  he 
bent  over  the  table  in  the  attitude  of  writ- 
ing, but  I  was  conscious  that  I  was  in  no 
sort  of  error  about  his  identity.  "  I  beg 
your  pardon;  I  thought  you  were  down- 
stairs," I  said ;  and  as  the  personage  gave 
no  sign  of  hearing  me  I  added,  "  If  you're 
busy  I  won't  disturb  you."  I  backed  out, 
closing  the  door — I  had  been  in  the  place,  I 
suppose,  less  than  a  minute.  I  had  a  sense 
of  mystification,  which  however  deepened 
infinitely  the  next  instant.  I  stood  there 
with  my  hand  still  on  the  knob  of  the  door, 
overtaken  by  the  oddest  impression  of  my 
life.  Vawdrey  was  at  his  table,  writing, 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 


35 


and  it  was  a  very  natural  place  for  him  to 
be  ;  but  why  was  he  writing  in  the  dark,  and 
why  hadn't  he  answered  me  ?  I  waited  a 
few  seconds  for  the  sound  of  some  move- 
ment, to  see  if  he  wouldn't  rouse  himself 
from  his  abstraction— a  fit  conceivable  in  a 
great  writer — and  call  out :  "  Oh,  my  dear 
fellow,  is  it  you  ?"  But  I  heard  only  the 
stillness,  I  felt  only  the  starlighted  dusk  of 
the  room,  with  the  unexpected  presence  it 
enclosed.  I  turned  away,  slowly  retracing 
my  steps,  and  came  confusedly  down-stairs. 
The  lamp  was  still  burning  in  the  salon,  but 
the  room  was  empty.  I  passed  round  to 
the  door  of  the  hotel  and  stepped  out. 
Empty  too  was  the  terrace.  Blanche  Adney 
and  the  gentleman  with  her  had  apparently 
come  in.  I  hung  about  five  minutes  ;  then 
I  went  to  bed. 

I  slept  badly,  for  I  was  agitated.  On 
looking  back  at  these  queer  occurrences 
(you  will  see  presently  that  they  were  queer), 
I  perhaps  suppose  myself  more  agitated 
than  I  was ;  for  great  anomalies  are  never 
so  great  at  first  as  after  we  have  reflected 
upon  them.  It  takes  us  some  time  to  ex- 


36  THE   PRIVATE   LIFE 

haust  explanations.  I  was  vaguely  nervous 
—I  had  been  sharply  startled  ;  but  there  was 
nothing  I  could  not  clear  up  by  asking 
Blanche  Adney,  the  first  thing  in  the  morning, 
who  had  been  with  her  on  the  terrace.  Oddly 
enough,  however,  when  the  morning  dawned 
— it  dawned  admirably — I  felt  less  desire  to 
satisfy  myself  on  this  point  than  to  escape, 
to  brush  away  the  shadow  of  my  stupefac- 
tion. I  saw  the  day  would  be  splendid,  and 
the  fancy  took  me  to  spend  it,  as  I  had 
spent  happy  days  of  youth,  in  a  lonely 
mountain  ramble.  I  dressed  early,  partook 
of  conventional  coffee,  put  a  big  roll  into 
one  pocket  and  a  small  flask  into-the  other, 
and,  with  a  stout  stick  in  my  hand,  went  forth 
into  the  high  places.  My  story  is  not  closely 
concerned  with  the  charming  hours  I  passed 
there— hours  of  the  kind  that  make  intense 
memories.  If  I  roamed  away  half  of  them 
on  the  shoulders  of  the  hills,  I  lay  on  the 
sloping  grass  for  the  other  half  and,  with 
my  cap  pulled  over  my  eyes  (save  a  peep 
for  immensities  of  view),  listened,  in  the 
bright  stillness,  to  the  mountain  bee  and 
felt  most  things  sink  and  dwindle.  Clare 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  37 

Vawdrey  grew  small,  Blanche  Adney  grew 
dim,  Lord  Mellifont  grew  old,  and  before 
the  day  was  over  I  forgot  that  I  had  ever 
been  puzzled.  When  in  the  late  afternoon 
I  made  my  way  down  to  the  inn  there  was 
nothing  I  wanted  so  much  to  find  out  as 
whether  dinner  would  not  soon  be  ready. 
To-night  I  dressed,  in  a  manner,  and  by  the 
time  I  was  presentable  they  were  all  at 
table. 

In  their  company  again  my  little  problem 
came  back  to  me,  so  that  I  was  curious  to 
see  if  Vawdrey  wouldn't  look  at  me  the  least 
bit  queerly.  But  he  didn't  look  at  me  at 
all ;  which  gave  me  a  chance  both  to  be  pa- 
tient and  to  wonder  why  I  should  hesitate 
to  ask  him  my  question  across  the  table.  I 
did  hesitate,  and  with  the  consciousness  of 
doing  so  came  back  a  little  of  the  agitation 
I  had  left  behind  me,  or  below  me,  during 
the  day.  I  wasn't  ashamed  of  my  scruple, 
however :  it  was  only  a  fine  discretion. 
What  I  vaguely  felt  was  that  a  public  in- 
quiry wouldn't  have' been  fair.  Lord  Melli- 
font was  there,  of  course,  to  mitigate  with 
his  perfect  manner  all  consequences ;  but  I 


38  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

think  it  was  present  to  me  that  with  these 
particular  elements  his  lordship  would  not 
be  at  home.  The  moment  we  got  up,  there- 
fore, I  approached  Mrs.  Adney,  asking  her 
whether,  as  the  evening  was  lovely,  she 
wouldn't  take  a  turn  with  me  outside. 

"You've  walked  a  hundred  miles;  had 
you  not  better  be  quiet  ?"  she  replied. 

"  I'd  walk  a  hundred  miles  more  to  get 
you  to  tell  me  something." 

She  looked  at  me  an  instant,  with  a  little 
of  the  queerness  I  had  sought,  but  had  not 
found,  in  Clare  Vawdrey's  eyes.  "  Do  you 
mean  what  became  of  Lord  Mellifont  ?" 

"Of  Lord  Mellifont?1'  With  my  new 
speculation  I  had  lost  that  thread. 

"  Where's  your  memory,  foolish  man  ? 
We  talked  of  it  last  evening." 

"  Ah,  yes  !"  I  cried,  recalling ;  "  we  shall 
have  lots  to  discuss."  I  drew  her  out  to  the 
terrace,  and  before  we  had  gone  three  steps 
I  said  to  her  :  "  Who  was  with  you  here  last 
night  ?" 

"Last  night?"  she  repeated,  as  wide  of 
the  mark  as  I  had  been. 

"At  ten  o'clock — just  after  our  company 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  39 

broke  up.  You  came  out  here  with  a  gentle- 
man ;  you  talked  about  the  stars." 

She  stared  a  moment ;  then  she  gave  her 
laugh.  "  Are  you  jealous  of  dear  Vaw- 
drey?" 

"  Then  it  was  he  ?" 

"  Certainly  it  was." 

"  And  how  long  did  he  stay?" 

"  You  have  it  badly.  He  stayed  about  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  —  perhaps  rather  more. 
We  walked  some  distance;  he  talked  about 
his  play.  There  you  have  it  all ;  that  is  the 
only  witchcraft  I  have  used." 

"  And  what  did  Vawdrey  do  afterwards  ?" 

"  I  haven't  the  least  idea.  I  left  him  and 
went  to  bed." 

"  At  what  time  did  you  go  to  bed  ?" 

"  At  what  time  did  you  ?  I  happen  to  re- 
member that  I  parted  from  Mr.  Vawdrey  at 
ten  twenty-five,"  said  Mrs.  Adney.  "  I  came 
back  into  the  salon  to  pick  up  a  book,  and 
I  noticed  the  clock." 

"  In  other  words,  you  and  Vawdrey  dis- 
tinctly lingered  here  from  about  five  min- 
utes past  ten  till  the  hour  you  mention  ?" 

"  I  don't  know  how  distinct  we  were,  but 


40  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

we  were  very  jolly.  On  voiilez-vous  en  venir?" 
Blanche  Adney  asked. 

"  Simply  to  this,  dear  lady :  that  at  the 
time  your  companion  was  occupied  in  the 
manner  you  describe,  he  was  also  engaged 
in  literary  composition  in  his  own  room." 

She  stopped  short  at  this,  and  her  eyes 
had  an  expression  in  the  darkness.  She 
wanted  to  know  if  I  challenged  her  verac- 
ity ;  and  I  replied  that,  on  the  contrary,  I 
backed  it  up  —  it  made  the  case  so  interest- 
ing. She  returned  that  this  would  only  be 
if  she  should  back  up  mine;  which,  how- 
ever, I  had  no  difficulty  in  persuading  her 
to  do,  after  I  had  related  to  her  circumstan- 
tially the  incident  of  my  quest  of  the  manu- 
script —  the  manuscript  which,  at  the  time, 
for  a  reason  I  could  now  understand,  ap- 
peared to  have  passed  so  completely  out  of 
her  own  head. 

"  His  talk  made  me  forget  it  —  I  forgot  I 
sent  you  for  it.  He  made  up  for  his  fiasco 
in  the  salon :  he  declaimed  me  the  scene," 
said  my  companion.  She  had  dropped  on  a 
bench  to  listen  to  me,  and,  as  we  sat  there, 
had  briefly  cross-examined  me.  Then  she 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  41 

broke  out  into  fresh  laughter.  "  Oh,  the 
eccentricities  of  genius  !" 

"They  seem  greater  even  than  I  sup- 
posed." 

"  Oh,  the  mysteries  of  greatness  !" 

"  You  ought  to  know  all  about  them,  but 
they  take  me  by  surprise." 

"Are  you  absolutely  certain  it  was  Mr. 
Vawdrey  ?"  my  companion  asked. 

"  If  it  wasn't  he,  who  in  the  world  was  it  ? 
That  a  strange  gentleman,  looking  exactly 
like  him,  should  be  sitting  in  his  room  at 
that  hour  of  the  night  and  writing  at  his 
table  in  the  dark"  I  insisted,  "would  be 
practically  as  wonderful  as  my  own  conten- 
tion." 

"Yes,  why  in  the  dark?"  mused  Mrs. 
Adney. 

"  Cats  can  see  in  the  dark,"  I  said. 

She  smiled  at  me  dimly.  "  Did  it  look 
like  a  cat  ?" 

"  No,  dear  lady ;  but  I'll  tell  you  what  it 
did  look  like  —  it  looked  like  the  author  of 
Vawdrey 's  admirable  works.  It  looked  infi- 
nitely more  like  him  than  our  friend  does 
himself,"  I  declared. 


42  THE   PRIVATE   LIFE 

"  Do  you  mean  it  was  somebody  he  gets 
to  do  them  ?" 

"  Yes,  while  he  dines  out  and  disappoints 
you." 

"Disappoints  me?"  murmured  Mrs.  Ad- 
ney,  artlessly. 

"  Disappoints  me — disappoints  every  one 
who  looks  in  him  for  the  genius  that  created 
the  pages  they  adore.  Where  is  it  in  his 
talk  ?" 

"Ah,  last  night  he  was  splendid,"  said 
the  actress. 

"  He's  always  splendid,  as  your  morning 
bath  is  splendid,  or  a  sirloin  of  beef,  or  the 
railway  service  to  Brighton.  But  he's  never 
rare." 

"  I  see  what  you  mean." 

"  That's  what  makes  you  such  a  comfort 
to  talk  to.  I've  often  wondered — now  I 
know.  There  are  two  of  them." 

"  What  a  delightful  idea  !" 

"  One  goes  out,  the  other  stays  at  home. 
One  is  the  genius,  the  other's  the  bourgeois , 
and  it's  only  the  bourgeois  whom  we  person- 
ally know.  He  talks,  he  circulates,  he's 
awfully  popular  ;  he  flirts  with  you — " 


THE   PRIVATE   LIFE  43 

"  Whereas  it's  the  genius  you  are  priv- 
ileged to  see ! "  Mrs.  Adney  broke  in. 
"  I'm  much  obliged  to  you  for  the  distinc- 
tion." 

I  laid  my  hand  on  her  arm.  "  See  him 
yourself.  Try  it,  test  it,  go  to  his  room." 

"  Go  to  his  room  ?  It  wouldn't  be  prop- 
er !"  she  exclaimed,  in  the  tone  of  her  best 
comedy. 

"  Anything  is  proper  in  such  an  inquiry. 
If  you  see  him,  it  settles  it." 

"  How  charming  —  to  settle  it !"  She 
thought  a  moment,  then  she  sprang  up. 
"  Do  you  mean  now  1" 

"Whenever  you  like." 

"But  suppose  I  should  find  the  wrong 
one  ?"  said  Blanche  Adney,  with  an  exquis- 
ite effect. 

"  The  wrong  one  ?  Which  one  do  you 
call  the  right  ?" 

"  The  wrong  one  for  a  lady  to  go  and  see. 
Suppose  I  shouldn't  find — the  genius  ?" 

"  Oh,  I'll  look  after  the  other,"  I  replied. 
Then,  as  I  happened  to  glance  about  me,  I 
added,  "  Take  care,  here  comes  Lord  Mel- 
lifont." 


44  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

"  I  wish  you'd  look  after  //////,"  my  inter- 
locutress murmured. 

"  What's  the  matter  with  him  ?" 
"  That's  just  what  I  was  going  to  tell  you." 
"  Tell  me  now ;  he's  not  coming." 
Blanche  Adney  looked  a  moment.     Lord 
Mellifont,  who  appeared  to  have  emerged 
from  the  hotel  to  smoke  a  meditative  cigar, 
had  paused,  at  a  distance  from  us,  and  stood 
admiring  the  wonders  of  the  prospect,  dis- 
cernible  even   in  the  dusk.      We   strolled 
slowly  in  another  direction,  and  she  present- 
ly said,"  My  idea  is  almost  as  droll  as  yours." 
"  I  don't  call  mine  droll ;  it's  beautiful." 
"  There's    nothing    so    beautiful   as    the 
droll,"  Mrs.  Adney  declared. 

"  You  take  a  professional  view.  But  I'm 
all  ears."  My  curiosity  was  indeed  alive 
again. 

"Well  then,  my  dear  friend,  if  Clare 
Vawdrey  is  double  (and  I'm  bound  to  say  I 
think  that  the  more  of  him  the  better),  his 
lordship  there  has  the  opposite  complaint : 
he  isn't  even  whole." 

We  stopped  once  more,  simultaneously. 
"  I  don't  understand." 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  45 

"  No  more  do  I.  But  I  have  a  fancy  that 
if  there  are  two  of  Mr.  Vawdrey,  there  isn't 
so  much  as  one,  all  told,  of  Lord  Melli- 
font." 

I  considered  a  moment,  then  I  laughed 
out.  "  I  think  I  see  what  you  mean  !" 

"  That's  what  makes  you  a  comfort.  Did 
you  ever  see  him  alone  ?" 

I  tried  to  remember.  "  Oh  yes  ;  he  has 
been  to  see  me." 

"Ah,  then  he  wasn't  alone." 

"And  I've  been  to  see  him,  in  his  study." 

"  Did  he  know  you  were  there  ?" 

"  Naturally — I  was  announced." 

Blanche  Adney  glanced  at  me  like  a 
lovely  conspirator.  "You  mustn't  be  an- 
nounced !"  With  this  she  walked  on. 

I  rejoined  her,  breathless.  "  Do  you 
mean  one  must  come  upon  him  when  he 
doesn't  know  it  ?" 

"You  must  take  him  unawares.  You 
must  go  to  his  room — that's  what  you  must 
do." 

If  I  was  elated  by  the  way  our  mystery 
opened  out,  I  was  also,  pardonably,  a  little 
confused.  "  When  I  know  he's  not  there  ?" 


46  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

"  When  you  know  he  />." 

"And  what  shall  I  see  ?" 

"You  won't  see  anything!"  Mrs.  Adney 
cried  as  we  turned  round. 

We  had  reached  the  end  of  the  terrace, 
and  our  movement  brought  us  face  to  face 
with  Lord  Mellifont,  who,  resuming  his 
walk,  had  now,  without  indiscretion,  over- 
taken us.  The  sight  of  him  at  that  moment 
was  illuminating,  and  it  kindled  a  great 
backward  train,  connecting  itself  with  one's 
general  impression  of  the  personage.  As 
he  stood  there  smiling  at  us  and  waving  a 
practised  hand  into  the  transparent  night 
(he  introduced  the  view  as  if  it  had  been  a 
candidate  and  "  supported  "  the  very  Alps), 
as  he  rose  before  us  in  the  delicate  fragrance 
of  his  cigar  and  all  his  other  delicacies  and 
fragrances,  with  more  perfections,  somehow, 
heaped  upon  his  handsome  head  than  one 
had  ever  seen  accumulated  before,  he 
struck  me  as  so  essentially,  so  conspicu- 
ously and  uniformly  the  public  character 
that  I  read  in  a  flash  the  answer  to  Blanche 
Adney's  riddle.  He  was  all  public  and  had 
no  corresponding  private  life,  just  as  Clare 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  47 

Vawdrey  was  all  private  and  had  no  cor- 
responding public  one.  I  had  heard  only 
half  my  companion's  story,  yet  as  we  joined 
Lord  Mellifont  (he  had  followed  us — he 
liked  Mrs.  Adney ;  but  it  was  always  to  be 
conceived  of  him  that  he  accepted  society 
rather  than  sought  it),  as  we  participated 
for  half  an  hour  in  the  distributed  wealth  of 
his  conversation,  I  felt  with  unabashed  du- 
plicity that  we  had,  as  it  were,  found  him 
out.  I  was  even  more  deeply  diverted  by 
that  whisk  of  the  curtain  to  which  the 
actress  had  just  treated  me  than  I  had  been 
by  my  own  discovery ;  and  if  I  was  not 
ashamed  of  my  share  of  her  secret  any  more 
than  of  having  divided  my  own  with  her 
(though  my  own  was,  of  the  two  mysteries, 
the  more  glorious  for  the  personage  in- 
volved), this  was  because  there  was  no 
cruelty  in  my  advantage,  but  on  the  con- 
trary an  extreme  tenderness  and  a  positive 
compassion.  Oh,  he  was  safe  with  me,  and 
I  felt  moreover  rich  and  enlightened,  as  if  I 
had  suddenly  put  the  universe  into  my 
pocket.  I  had  learned  what  an  affair  of  the 
spot  and  the  moment  a  great  appearance 


43  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

may  be.  It  would  doubtless  be  too  much 
to  say  that  I  had  always  suspected  the 
possibility,  in  the  background  of  his  lord- 
ship's being,  of  some  such  beautiful  in- 
stance ;  but  it  is  at  least  a  fact  that,  patroniz- 
ing as  it  sounds,  I  had  been  conscious  of  a 
certain  reserve  of  indulgence  for  him.  I 
had  secretly  pitied  him  for  the  perfection 
of  his  performance,  had  wondered  what 
blank  face  such  a  mask  had  to  cover,  what 
was  left  to  him  for  the  immitigable  hours  in 
which  a  man  sits  down  with  himself,  or, 
more  serious  still,  with  that  intenser  self, 
his  lawful  wife.  How  was  he  at  home,  and 
what  did  he  do  when  he  was  alone  ?  There 
was  something  in  Lady  Mellifont  that  gave 
a  point  to  these  researches — something  that 
suggested  that  even  to  her  he  was  still  the 
public  character,  and  that  she  was  haunted 
by  similar  questionings.  She  had  never 
cleared  them  up ;  that  was  her  eternal 
trouble.  We  therefore  knew  more  than  she 
did,  Blanche  Adney  and  I  ;  but  we  wouldn't 
tell  her  for  the  world,  nor  would  she  prob- 
ably thank  us  for  doing  so.  She  preferred 
the  relative  grandeur  of  uncertainty.  She 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 


49 


was  not  at  home  with  him,  so  she  couldn't 
say ;  and  with  her  he  was  not  alone,  so  he 
couldn't  show  her.  He  represented  to  his 
wife  and  he  was  a  hero  to  his  servants,  and 
what  one  wanted  to  arrive  at  was  what 
really  became  of  him  when  no  eye  could 
see.  He  rested,  presumably ;  but  what 
form  of  rest  could  repair  such  a  plenitude 
of  presence?  Lady  Mellifont  was  too 
proud  to  pry,  and  as  she  had  never  looked 
through  a  keyhole  she  remained  dignified 
and  un assuaged. 

It  may  have  been  a  fancy  of  mine  that 
Blanche  Adney  drew  out  our  companion,  or 
it  may  be  that  the  practical  irony  of  our 
relation  to  him  at  such  a  moment  made  me 
see  him  more  vividly ;  at  any  rate,  he  never 
had  struck  me  as  so  dissimilar  from  what 
he  would  have  been  if  we  had  not  offered 
him  a  reflection  of  his  image.  We  were 
only  a  concourse  of  two,  but  he  had  never 
been  more  public.  His  perfect  manner  had 
never  been  more  perfect,  his  remarkable 
tact  had  never  been  more  remarkable.  I 
had  a  tacit  sense  that  it  would  all  be  in 
the  morning  papers,  with  a  leader,  and  also 


50  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

a  secretly  exhilarating  one  that  I  knew 
something  that  wouldn't  be,  that  never 
could  be,  though  any  enterprising  journal 
would  give  one  a  fortune  for  it.  I  must 
add,  however,  that  in  spite  of  my  enjoy- 
ment— it  was  almost  sensual,  like  that  of  a 
consummate  dish — I  was  eager  to  be  alone 
again  with  Mrs.  Adney,  who  owed  me  an 
anecdote.  It  proved  impossible,  that  even- 
ing, for  some  of  the  others  came  out  to  see 
what  we  found  so  absorbing :  and  then 
Lord  Mellifont  bespoke  a  little  music  from 
the  fiddler,  who  produced  his  violin  and 
played  to  us  divinely,  on  our  platform  of 
echoes,  face  to  face  with  the  ghosts  of  the 
mountains.  Before  the  concert  was  over  I 
missed  our  actress,  and  glancing  into  the 
window  of  the  salon,  saw  that  she  was  es- 
tablished with  Vawdrey,  who  was  reading  to 
her  from  a  manuscript.  The  great  scene 
had  apparently  been  achieved,  and  was 
doubtless  the  more  interesting  to  Blanche 
from  the  new  lights  she  had  gathered  about 
its  author.  I  judged  it  discreet  not  to  dis- 
turb them,  and  I  went  to  bed  without 
seeing  her  again.  I  looked  out  for  her  be- 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  51 

times  the  next  morning,  and  as  the  promise 
of  the  day  was  fair,  proposed  to  her  that  we 
should  take  to  the  hills,  reminding  her  of 
the  high  obligation  she  had  incurred.  She 
recognized  the  obligation  and  gratified  me 
with  her  company ;  but  before  we  had 
strolled  ten  yards  up  the  pass  she  broke 
out  with  intensity  :  "  My  dear  friend,  you've 
no  idea  how  it  works  in  me !  I  can  think 
of  nothing  else." 

"Than  your  theory  about  Lord  Melli- 
font  ?" 

"  Oh,  bother  Lord  Mellifont !  I  allude 
to  yours  about  Mr.  Vawdrey,  who  is  much 
the  more  interesting  person  of  the  two. 
I'm  fascinated  by  that  vision  of  his — what- 
do-you-call-it  ?" 

"  His  alternative  identity  ?" 
"His  other  self  ;  that's  easier  to  say." 
"  You  accept  it,  then,  you  adopt  it  ?" 
"Adopt  it  ?     I  rejoice  in  it !     It  became 
tremendously  vivid  to  me  last  evening.'' 
"  While  he  read  to  you  there  ?" 
"Yes,  as  I  listened  to  him,  watched  him. 
It   simplified  everything,   explained  every- 
thing." 


52  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

"  That's  indeed  the  blessing  of  it.  Is  the 
scene  very  fine?" 

"Magnificent!  and  he  reads  beautifully." 

"Almost  as  well  as  the  other  one  writes  !" 
I  laughed. 

This  made  my  companion  stop  a  moment, 
laying  her  hand  on  my  arm.  "  You  utter 
my  very  impression.  I  felt  that  he  was 
reading  me  the  work  of  another  man." 

"  What  a  service  to  the  other  man  !" 

"  Such  a  totally  different  person,"  said 
Mrs.  Adney.  We  talked  of  this  difference 
as  we  went  on,  and  of  what  a  wealth  it  con- 
stituted, what  a  resource  for  life,  such  a 
duplication  of  character. 

''"It  ought  to  make  him  live  twice  as  long 
as  other  people,"  I  observed. 

"  Ought  to  make  which  of  them  ?" 

"  Well,  both ;  for  after  all  they're  mem- 
bers of  a  firm,  and  one  of  them  couldn't 
carry  on  the  business  without  the  other. 
Moreover,  mere  survival  would  be  dreadful 
for  either." 

Blanche  Adney  was  silent  a  little  ;  then 
she  exclaimed  .  "  I  don't  know — I  wish  he 
would  survive !" 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  53 

"  May  I,  on  my  side,  inquire  which  ?" 

"  If  you  can't  guess,  I  won't  tell  you." 

"  I  know  the  heart  of  woman.  You  al- 
ways prefer  the  other." 

She  halted  again,  looking  round  her. 
"  Off  here,  away  from  my  husband,  I  can 
tell  you.  I'm  in  love  with  him  !" 

"  Unhappy  woman,  he  has  no  passions," 
I  answered. 

"  That's  exactly  why  I  adore  him.  Doesn't 
a  woman  with  my  history  know  that  the  pas- 
sions of  others  are  insupportable  ?  An 
actress,  poor  thing,  can't  care  for  any  love 
that's  not  all  on  7/<?rside;  she  can't  afford 
to  be  repaid.  My  marriage  proves  that ; 
marriage  is  ruinous.  Do  you  know  what 
was  in  my  mind  last  night,  all  the  while 
Mr.  Vawdrey  was  reading  me  those  beauti- 
ful speeches  ?  An  insane  desire  to  see  the 
author."  And  dramatically,  as  if  to  hide 
her  shame,  Blanche  Adney  passed  on. 

"We'll  manage  that,"  I  returned.  "I 
want  another  glimpse  of  him  myself.  But 
meanwhile  please  remember  that  I've  been 
waiting  more  than  forty-eight  hours  for  the 
evidence  that  supports  your  sketch,  intensely 


54  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

suggestive  and  plausible,  of  Lord  Melli- 
font's  private  life." 

"Oh,  Lord  Mellifont  doesn't  interest 
me." 

"  He  did  yesterday,"  I  said. 

"  Yes,  but  that  was  before  I  fell  in  love. 
You  blotted  him  out  with  your  story." 

"  You'll  make  me  sorry  I  told  it.  Come," 
I  pleaded,  "  if  you  don't  let  me  know  how 
your  idea  came  into  your  head  I  shall 
imagine  you  simply  made  it  up." 

"  Let  me  recollect,  then,  while  we  wander 
in  this  grassy  valley." 

We  stood  at  the  entrance  of  a  charming 
crooked  gorge,  a  portion  of  whose  level 
floor  formed  the  bed  of  a  stream  that  was 
smooth  with  swiftness.  We  turned  into  it, 
and  the  soft  walk  beside  the  clear  torrent 
drew  us  on  and  on  ;  till  suddenly,  as  we 
continued  and  I  waited  for  my  companion 
to  remember,  a  bend  of  the  valley  showed 
us  Lady  Mellifont  coming  towards  us.  She 
was  alone,  under  the  canopy  of  her  parasol, 
drawing  her  sable  train  over  the  turf ;  and 
in  this  form,  on  the  devious  wrays,  she  was 
a  sufficiently  rare  apparition.  She  usually 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  55 

took  a  footman,  who  marched  behind  her 
on  the  highroads  and  whose  livery  was 
strange  to  the  mountaineers.  She  blushed 
on  seeing  us,  as  if  she  ought  somehow  to 
justify  herself;  she  laughed  vaguely,  and 
said  she  had  come  out  for  a  little  early 
stroll.  We  stood  together  a  moment,  ex- 
changing platitudes,  and  then  she  remarked 
that  she  had  thought  she  might  find  her 
husband. 

"  Is  he  in  this  quarter  ?"     I  inquired. 

"  I  supposed  he  would  be.  He  came  out 
an  hour  ago  to  sketch.'' 

"  Have  you  been  looking  for  him  ?"  Mrs. 
Adney  asked. 

"  A  little  ;  not  very  much,"  said  Lady 
Mellifont. 

Each  of  the  women  rested  her  eyes  with 
some  intensity,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  on  the 
eyes  of  the  other. 

"  We'll  look  for  him  for  you,  if  you  like," 
said  Mrs.  Adney. 

"  Oh,  it  doesn't  matter.  I  thought  I'd 
join  him." 

"  He  won't  make  his  sketch  if  you  don't," 
my  companion  hinted. 


56  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

"  Perhaps  he  will  if  you  do,"  said  Lady 
Mellifont. 

"Oh,  I  dare  say  he'll  turn  up,"  I  inter- 
posed. 

"  He  certainly  will,  if  he  knows  we're 
here  !"  Blanche  Adney  retorted. 

"  Will  you  wait  while  we  search  ?"  I  asked 
of  Lady  Mellifont. 

She  repeated  that  it  was  of  no  conse- 
quence ;  upon  which  Mrs.  Adney  went  on : 
"  We'll  go  into  the  matter  for  our  own 
pleasure." 

"  I  wish  you  a  pleasant  expedition,"  said 
her  ladyship,  and  was  turning  away,  when  I 
sought  to  know  if  we  should  inform  her  hus- 
band that  she  had  followed  him.  She  hesi- 
tated a  moment ;  then  she  jerked  out,  oddly, 
"  I  think  you  had  better  not."  With  this  she 
took  leave  of  us,  floating  a  little  stiffly  down 
the  gorge. 

My  companion  and  I  watched  her  retreat, 
then  we  exchanged  a  stare,  while  a  light 
ghost  of  a  laugh  rippled  from  the  actress's 
lips.  "  She  might  be  walking  in  the  shrub- 
beries at  Mellifont !" 

"  She  suspects  it,  you  know,"  I  replied. 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  57 

"  And  she  doesn't  want  him  to  know  it. 
There  won't  be  any  sketch." 

"  Unless  we  overtake  him,"  I  subjoined. 
"  In  that  case  we  shall  find  him  producing 
one,  in  the  most  graceful  attitude,  and  the 
queer  thing  is  that  it  will  be  brilliant." 

"  Let  us  leave  him  alone  ;  he'll  have  to 
come  home  without  it." 

"  He'd  rather  never  come  home.  Oh,  he'll 
find  a  public !" 

"Perhaps  he'll  do  it  for  the  cows,"  Blanche 
Adney  suggested;  and  as  I  was  on  the 
point  of  rebuking  her  profanity  she  went  on, 
"  That's  simply  what  I  happened  to  dis- 
cover." 

"  What  are  you  speaking  of  ?" 

"  The  incident  of  day  before  yesterday." 

"  Ah,  let's  have  it,  at  last !" 

"That's  all  it  was— that  I  was  like  Lady 
Mellifont;  I  couldn't  find  him." 

"  Did  you  lose  him  ?" 

"  He  lost  me — that  appears  to  be  the  way 
of  it.  He  thought  I  was  gone." 

"  But  you  did  find  him,  since  you  came 
home  with  him." 

"  It  was  he  who  found  me.    That  again  is 


58  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

what  must  happen.  He's  there  from  the 
moment  he  knows  somebody  else  is." 

"  I  understand  his  intermissions,"  I  said, 
after  a  short  reflection ;  "  but  I  don't  quite 
seize  the  law  that  governs  them." 

"  Oh,  it's  a  fine  shade,  but  I  caught  it  at 
that  moment.  I  had  started  to  come  home. 
I  was  tired,  and  I  had  insisted  on  his  not 
coming  back  with  me.  We  had  found  some 
rare  flowers — those  I  brought  home — and  it 
was  he  who  had  discovered  almost  all  of 
them.  It  amused  him  very  much,  and  I 
knew  he  wanted  to  get  more ;  but  I  was 
weary  and  I  quitted  him.  He  let  me  go- 
where  else  would  have  been  his  tact  ? — and 
I  was  too  stupid  then  to  have  guessed  that 
from  the  moment  I  was  not  there  no  flower 
would  be  gathered.  I  started  homeward, 
but  at. the  end  of  three  minutes  I  found  I 
had  brought  away  his  penknife — he  had  lent 
it  to  me  to  trim  a  branch — and  I  knew  he 
would  need  it.  I  turned  back  a  few  steps 
to  call  him,  but  before  I  spoke  I  looked 
about  for  him.  You  can't  understand  what 
happened  then  without  having  the  place  be- 
fore you." 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  59 

"  You  must  take  me  there,"  I  said. 

"  We  may  see  the  wonder  here.  The 
place  was  simply  one  that  offered  no  chance 
for  concealment — a  great  gradual  hill-side, 
without  obstructions  or  trees.  There  were 
some  rocks  below  me,  behind  which  I  my- 
self had  disappeared,  but  from  which,  on 
coming  back,  I  immediately  emerged  again." 

"  Then  he  must  have  seen  you." 

"  He  was  too  utterly  gone,  for  some  reason 
best  known  to  himself.  It  was  probably 
some  moment  of  fatigue— he's  getting  on, 
you  know,  so  that,  with  the  sense  of  return- 
ing solitude,  the  reaction  had  been  propor- 
tionately great,  the  extinction  proportion- 
ately complete.  At  any  rate,  the  stage  was 
as  bare  as  your  hand." 

"  Could  he  have  been  somewhere  else  ?" 

"  He  couldn't  have  been,  in  the  time,  any- 
where but  where  I  had  left  him.  Yet  the 
place  was  utterly  empty — as  empty  as  this 
stretch  of  valley  before  us.  He  had  vanished 
— he  had  ceased  to  be.  But  as  soon  as  my 
voice  rang  out  (I  uttered  his  name),  he  rose 
before  me  like  the  rising  sun." 

"  And  where  did  the  sun  rise  ?" 


60  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

"Just  where  it  ought  to  —  just  where  he 
would  have  been,  and  where  I  should  have 
seen  him,  had  he  been  like  other  people." 

I  had  listened  with  the  deepest  interest, 
but  it  was  my  duty  to  think  of  objections. 
"  How  long  a  time  elapsed  between  the  mo- 
ment you  perceived  his  absence  and  the 
moment  you  called?" 

"Oh,  only  an  instant.  I  don't  pretend  it 
was  long." 

"  Long  enough  for  you  to  be  sure  ?"  I 
said. 

"  Sure  he  wasn't  there  ?" 

"  Yes ;  and  that  you  were  not  mistaken, 
not  the  victim  of  some  hocus-pocus  of  your 
eyesight  ?" 

"  I  may  have  been  mistaken,  but  I  don't 
believe  it.  At  any  rate,  that's  just  why  I 
want  you  to  look  in  his  room." 

I  thought  a  moment.  "  How  can  I,  when 
even  his  wife  doesn't  dare  to  ?" 

"  She  wants  to ;  propose  it  to  her.  It 
wouldn't  take  much  to  make  her.  She  does 
suspect." 

I  thought  another  moment.  "  Did  he 
seem  to  know  ?" 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  6l 

"That  I  had  missed  him?  So  it  struck 
me,  but  he  thought  he  had  been  quick 
enough." 

"  Did  you  speak  of  his  disappearance  ?" 
"  Heaven  forbid  !     It  seemed  to  me  too 
strange." 

"  Quite  right.  And  how  did  he  look  ?" 
Trying  to  think  it  out  again  and  reconsti- 
tute her  miracle,  Blanche  Adney  gazed  ab- 
stractedly up  the  valley.  Suddenly  she  ex- 
claimed, "Just  as  he  looks  now!"  and  I 
saw  Lord  Mellifont  stand  before  us  with  his 
sketch-block.  I  perceived,  as  we  met  him, 
that  he  looked  neither  suspicious  nor  blank; 
he  looked  simply,  as  he  did  always,  every- 
where, the  principal  feature  of  the  scene. 
Naturally  he  had  no  sketch  to  show  us,  but 
nothing  could  better  have  rounded  off  our 
actual  conception  of  him  than  the  way  he 
fell  into  position  as  we  approached.  He 
had  been  selecting  his  point  of  view ;  he 
took  possession  of  it  with  a  flourish  of  the 
pencil.  He  leaned  against  a  rock ;  his 
beautiful  little  box  of  water-colors  reposed 
on  a  natural  table  beside  him,  a  ledge  of  the 
bank,  which  showed  how  inveterately  nature 


62  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

ministered  to  his  convenience.  He  painted 
while  he  talked,  and  he  talked  while  he 
painted ;  and  if  the  painting  was  as  miscel- 
laneous as  the  talk,  the  talk  would  equally 
have  graced  an  album.  We  waited  while  the 
exhibition  went  on,  and  it  seemed  indeed  as 
if  the  conscious  profiles  of  the  peaks  were 
interested  in  his  success.  They  grew  as 
black  as  silhouettes  in  paper,  sharp  against 
a  livid  sky,  from  which,  however,  there 
would  be  nothing  to  fear  till  Lord  Mellifont's 
sketch  should  be  finished.  Blanche  Adney 
communed  with  me  dumbly,  and  I  could 
read  the  language  of  her  eyes:  "Oh,  if  we 
could  only  do  it  as  well  as  that !  He  fills 
the  stage  in  a  way  that  beats  us."  We  could 
no  more  have  left  him  than  we  could  have 
quitted  the  theatre  till  the  play  was  over; 
but  in  due  time  we  turned  round  with  him 
and  strolled  back  to  the  inn,  before  the  door 
of  which  his  lordship,  glancing  again  at  his 
picture,  tore  the  fresh  leaf  from  the  block* 
and  presented  it,  with  a  few  happy  words,  to 
Mrs.  Adney.  Then  he  went  into  the  house ; 
and  a  moment  later,  looking  up  from  where 
we  stood,  we  saw  him,  above,  at  the  window 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  63 

of  his  sitting-room  (he  had  the  best  apart- 
ments), watching  the  signs  of  the  weather. 

"  He'll  have  to  rest  after  this,"  Blanche 
said,  dropping  her  eyes  on  her  water-color. 

"  Indeed  he  will !"  I  raised  mine  to  the 
window.  Lord  Mellifont  had  vanished. 
"  He's  already  reabsorbed." 

"  Reabsorbed  ?"  I  could  see  the  actress 
was  now  thinking  of  something  else. 

"  Into  the  immensity  of  things.  He  has 
lapsed  again ;  there's  an  entr'acte^ 

"  It  ought  to  be  long."  Mrs.  Adney  looked 
up  and  down  the  terrace,  and  at  that  mo- 
ment the  head-waiter  appeared  in  the  door- 
way. Suddenly  she  turned  to  this  function- 
ary with  the  question :  "  Have  you  seen 
Mr.  Vawdrey  lately  ?" 

The  man  immediately  approached.  "  He 
left  the  house  five  minutes  ago — for  a  walk, 
I  think.  He  went  down  the  pass ;  he  had 
a  book." 

I  was  watching  the  ominous  clouds.  "  He 
had  better  have  had  an  umbrella." 

The  waiter  smiled.  "  I  recommended  him 
to  take  one." 

"  Thank    you,"    said    Mrs.   Adney ;    and 


04  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

the  Oberkellner  withdrew.  Then  she  went 
on,  to  me,  abruptly,  "Will  you  do  me  a 
favor?" 

"  Yes,  if  you'll  do  me  one.  Let  me  see  if 
your  picture  is  signed." 

She  glanced  at  the  sketch  before  giving 
it  to  me.  "  For  a  wonder  it  isn't." 

"  It  ought  to  be,  for  full  value.  May  I 
keep  it  awhile?" 

"  Yes,  if  you'll  do  what  I  ask.  Take  an 
umbrella  and  go  after  Mr.  Vawdrey," 

"To  bring  him  to  Mrs.  Adney?" 

"  To  keep  him  out — as  long  as  you  can." 

"  I'll  keep  him  as  long  as  the  rain  holds 
off." 

"  Oh,  never  mind  the  rain  !"  my  compan- 
ion exclaimed. 

"  Would  you  have  us  drenched  ?" 

"  Without  remorse."  Then,  with  a  strange 
light  in  her  eyes,  she  added,  "  I'm  going  to 
try." 

"To  try?" 

"To  see  the  real  one.  Oh,  if  I  can  get 
at  him !"  she  broke  out  with  passion. 

"Try,  try!"  I  replied.  "I'll  keep  our 
friend  all  day." 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  65 

"  If  I  can  get  at  the  one  who  does  it '' — 
and  she  paused,  with  shining  eyes — "  if  I  can 
have  it  out  with  him  I  shall  get  my  part !" 

"  I'll  keep  Vawdrey  forever !"  I  called 
after  her  as  she  passed  quickly  into  the 
house. 

Her  audacity  was  communicative,  and  I 
stood  there  in  a  glow  of  excitement,  I 
looked  at  Lord  Mellifont's  water-color  and 
I  looked  at  the  gathering  storm ;  I  turned 
my  eyes  again  to  his  lordship's  windows,  and 
then  I  bent  them  on  my  watch.  Vawdrey 
had  so  little  the  start  of  me  that  I  should 
have  time  to  overtake  him  — time  even  if  I 
should  take  five  minutes  to  go  up  to  Lord 
Mellifont's  sitting-room  (where  we  had  all 
been  hospitably  received),  and  say  to  him, 
as  a  messenger,  that  Mrs.  Adney  begged  he 
would  bestow  upon  his  sketch  the  high  con- 
secration of  his  signature*  As  I  again  con- 
sidered this  work  of  art  I  perceived  there 
was  something  it  certainly  did  lack  :  what 
else  then  but  so  noble  an  autograph  ?  It 
was  my  duty  to  suppy  the  deficiency  with- 
out delay,  and  in  accordance  with  this  con- 
viction I  instantly  re-entered  the  hotel.  I 

5 


66  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

went  up  to  Lord  Mellifont's  apartments;  I 
reached  the  door  of  his  salon.  Here,  how- 
ever, I  was  met  by  a  difficulty  of  which 
my  extravagance  had  not  taken  account. 
If  I  were  to  knock  I  should  spoil  every- 
thing ;  yet  was  I  prepared  to  dispense  with 
this  ceremony  ?  I  asked  myself  the  ques- 
tion, and  it  embarrassed  me ;  I  turned  my 
little  picture  round  and  round,  but  it  didn't 
give  me  the  answer  I  wanted.  I  wanted 
it  to  say ;  "  Open  the  door  gently,  gently, 
without  a  sound,  yet  very  quickly ;  then  you 
will  see  what  you  will  see."  I  had  gone  so 
far  as  to  lay  my  hand  upon  the  knob  when 
I  became  aware  (having  my  wits  so  about 
me),  that  exactly  in  the  manner  I  was  think- 
of — gently,  gently,  without  a  sound — an- 
other door  had  moved,  on  the  opposite  side 
of  the  hall.  At  the  same  instant  I  found 
myself  smiling  rather  constrainedly  upon 
Lady  Mellifont,  who,  on  seeing  me,  had 
checked  herself  on  the  threshold  of  her 
room.  For  a  moment,  as  she  stood  there, 
we  exchanged  two  or  three  ideas  that  were 
the  more  singular  for  being  unspoken.  We 
had  caught  each  other  hovering,  and  we  un- 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  67 

derstood  each  other ;  but  as  I  stepped  over 
to  her  (so  that  we  were  separated  from  the 
sitting-room  by  the  width  of  the  hall),  her 
lips  formed  the  almost  soundless  entreaty, 
"Don't!"  I  could  see  in  her  conscious  eyes 
everything  that  the  word  expressed — the 
confession  of  her  own  curiosity  and  the  dread 
of  the  consequences  of  mine.  "Don't!"  she 
repeated,  as  I  stood  before  her.  From  the 
moment  my  experiment  could  strike  her  as 
an  act  of  violence  I  was  ready  to  renounce 
it;  yet  I  thought  I  detected  in  her  frightened 
face  a  still  deeper  betrayal — a  possibility  of 
disappointment  if  I  should  give  way.  It 
was  as  if  she  had  said :  "  I'll  let  you  do  it, 
if  you'll  take  the  responsibility.  Yes,  with 
some  one  else,  I'd  surprise  him.  But  it 
would  never  do  for  him  to  think  it  was  I." 

"We  soon  found  Lord  Mellifont,"  I  ob- 
served, in  allusion  to  our  encounter  with 
her  an  hour  before,  "  and  he  was  so  good  as 
to  give  this  lovely  sketch  to  Mrs.  Adney, 
who  has  asked  me  to  come  up  and  beg  him 
to  put  in  the  omitted  signature." 

Lady  Mellifont  took  the  drawing  from 
me,  and  I  could  guess  the  struggle  that 


68  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

went  on  in  her  while  she  looked  at  it.  She 
was  silent  for  some  time ;  then  I  felt  that 
all  her  delicacies  and  dignities,  all  her  old 
timidities  and  pieties  were  fighting  against 
her  opportunity.  She  turned  away  from  me 
and  with  the  drawing  went  back  to  her 
room.  She  was  absent  for  a  couple  of 
minutes,  and  when  she  reappeared  I  could 
see  that  she  had  vanquished  her  temptation ; 
that  even,  with  a  kind  of  resurgent  horror, 
she  had  shrunk  from  it.  She  had  deposited 
the  sketch  in  the  room.  "  If  you  will  kind- 
ly leave  the  picture  with  me,  I  will  see  that 
Mrs.  Adney's  request  is  attended  to,"  she 
said,  with  great  courtesy  and  sweetness,  but 
in  a  manner  that  put  an  end  to  our  collo- 
quy. 

I  assented,  with  a  somewhat  artificial  en- 
thusiasm perhaps,  and  then,  to  ease  off  our 
separation,  remarked  that  we  were  going  to 
have  a  change  of  weather. 

"  In  that  case  we  shall  go — we  shall  go 
immediately,"  said  Lady  Mellifont.  I  was 
amused  at  the  eagerness  with  which  she 
made  this  declaration ,  it  appeared  to  rep- 
resent a  coveted  flight  into  safety,  an  escape 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  69 

with  her  threatened  secret.  I  was  the  more 
surprised,  therefore,  when,  as  I  was  turning 
away,  she  put  out  her  hand  to  take  mine. 
She  had  the  pretext  of  bidding  me  farewell, 
but  as  I  shook  hands  with  her  on  this 
supposition  I  felt  that  what  the  movement 
really  conveyed  was  :  "  I  thank  you  for  the 
help  you  would  have  given  me,  but  it's  bet- 
ter as  it  is.  If  I  should  know,  who  would 
help  me  then  ?"  As  I  went  to  my  room  to 
get  my  umbrella  I  said  to  myself,  "  She's 
sure,  but  she  won't  put  it  to  the  proof." 

A  quarter  of  an  hour  later  I  had  overtaken 
Clare  Vawdrey  in  the  pass,  and  shortly  after 
this  we  found  ourselves  looking  for  refuge. 
The  storm  had  not  only  completely  gathered, 
but  it  had  broken  at  the  last  with  extraordi- 
nary rapidity.  We  scrambled  up  a  hill-side 
to  an  empty  cabin,  a  rough  structure  that 
was  hardly  more  than  a  shed  for  the  protec- 
tion of  cattle.  It  was  a  tolerable  shelter 
however,  and  it  had  fissures  through  which 
we  could  watch  the  splendid  spectacle  of 
the  tempest.  This  entertainment  lasted  an 
hour — an  hour  that  has  remained  with  me 
as  full  of  odd  disparities.  While  the  light- 


yo  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

ning  played  with  the  thunder  and  the  rain 
gushed  in  on  our  umbrellas,  I  said  to  my- 
self that  Clare  Vawdrey  was  disappointing. 
I  don't  know  exactly  what  I  should  have 
predicated  of  a  great  author  exposed  to  the 
fury  of  the  elements,  I  can't  say  what  par- 
ticular Manfred  attitude  I  should  have  ex- 
pected my  companion  to  assume,  but  it 
seemed  to  me  somehow  that  I  shouldn't 
have  looked  to  him  to  regale  me  in  such  a 
situation  with  stories  (which  I  had  already 
heard)  about  the  celebrated  Lady  Ring- 
rose.  Her  ladyship  formed  the  subject  of 
Vawdrey's  conversation  during  this  prodig- 
ious scene,  though  before  it  was  quite  over 
he  had  launched  out  on  Mr.  Chafer,  the 
scarcely  less  notorious  reviewer.  It  broke 
my  heart  to  hear  a  man  like  Vawdrey  talk 
of  reviewers.  The  lightning  projected  a 
hard  clearness  upon  the  truth,  familiar  to 
me  for  years,  to  which  the  last  day  or  two 
had  added  transcendent  support — the  irri- 
tating certitude  that  for  personal  relations 
this  admirable  genius  thought  his  second- 
best  good  enough.  It  was,  no  doubt,  as 
society  was  made,  but  there  was  a  contempt 


THE    PRIVATE   LIFE  71 

in  the  distinction  which  could  not  fail  to  be 
galling  to  an  admirer.  The  world  was  vul- 
gar and  stupid,  and  the  real  man  would 
have  been  a  fool  to  come  out  for  it  when 
he  could  gossip  and  dine  by  deputy.  None 
the  less  my  heart  sank  as  I  felt  my 
companion  practice  this  economy.  I  don't 
know  exactly  what  I  wanted;  I  suppose  I 
wanted  him  to  make  an  exception  for  me. 
I  almost  believed  he  would,  if  he  had  known 
how  I  worshipped  his  talent.  But  I  had 
never  been  able  to  translate  this  to  him, 
and  his  application  of  his  principle  was  re- 
lentless. At  any  rate,  I  was  more  than 
ever  sure  that  at  such  an  hour  his  chair  at 
home  was  not  empty :  there  was  the  Man- 
fred attitude,  there  were  the  responsive 
flashes.  I  could  only  envy  Mrs.  Adney  her 
presumable  enjoyment  of  them. 

The  weather  drew  off  at  last,  and  the  rain 
abated  sufficiently  to  allow  us  to  emerge 
from  our  asylum  and  make  our  way  back  to 
the  inn,  where  we  found  on  our  arrival  that 
our  prolonged  absence  had  produced  some 
agitation.  It  was  judged  apparently  that 
the  fury  of  the  elements  might  have  placed 


72  THE    PRIVATE   LIFE 

us  in  a  predicament.  Several  of  our  friends 
were  at  the  door,  and  they  seemed  a  little 
disconcerted  when  it  was  perceived  that  we 
were  only  drenched.  Clare  Vawdrey,  for 
some  reason,  was  wetter  than  I,  and  he 
took  his  course  to  his  room.  Blanche  Ad- 
ney  was  among  the  persons  collected  to 
look  out  for  us,  but  as  Vawdrey  came  to- 
wards her  she  shrank  from  himr  without  a 
greeting ;  with  a  movement  that  I  observed 
as  almost  one  of  estrangement  she  turned 
her  back  on  him  and  went  quickly  into  the 
salon.  Wet  as  I  was,  I  went  in  after  her ; 
on  which  she  immediately  flung  round  and 
faced  me.  The  first  thing  I  saw  was  that 
she  had  never  been  so  beautiful.  There 
was  a  light  of  inspiration  in  her  face,  and 
she  broke  out  to  me  in  the  quickest  whis- 
per, which  was  at  the  same  time  the  loudest 
cry,  I  have  ever  heard:  "  I've  got  my  part!" 
"  You  went  to  his  room — I  was  right  ?" 
"  Right  ?"  Blanche  Adney  repeated.  "Ah, 
my  dear  fellow  !"  she  murmured. 
"  He  was  there — you  saw  him  ?" 
"He  saw  me.  It  was  the  hour  of  my 
life !" 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  73 

"It  must  have  been  the  hour  of  his,  if 
you  were  half  as  lovely  as  you  are  at  this 
moment." 

"  He's  splendid,"  she  pursued,  as  if  she 
didn't  hear  me.  "  He  is  the  one  who  does 
it !"  I  listened,  immensely  impressed,  and 
she  added:  "We  understood  each  other." 

"  By  flashes  of  lightning?1' 

"  Oh,  I  didn't  see  the  lightning  then  !" 

"  How  long  were  you  there  ?"  I  asked, 
with  admiration. 

"  Long  enough  to  tell  him  I  adore  him." 

"Ah,  that's  what  I've  never  been  able  to 
tell  him  !"  I  exclaimed,  ruefully. 

"  I  shall  have  my  part — I  shall  have  my 
part!"  she  continued,  with  triumphant  in- 
difference ,  and  she  flung  round  the  room 
with  the  joy  of  a  girl,  only  checking  herself 
to  say  :  "  Go  and  change  your  clothes." 

"  You  shall  have  Lord  Mellifont's  signa- 
ture," I  said. 

"  Oh,  bother  Lord  Mellifont's  signature  ! 
He's  far  nicer  than  Mr.  Vawdrey,"  she  went 
on,  irrelevantly. 

"  Lord  Mellifont  ?"  I  pretended  to  in- 
quire. 


74  THE    PRIVATE    LIFE 

"Confound  LordMellifont!"  And  Blanche 
Adney,  in  her  elation,  brushed  by  me,  whisk- 
ing again  through  the  open  door.  Just 
outside  of  it  she  came  upon  her  husband  ; 
whereupon,  with  a  charming  cry  of  "  We're 
talking  of  you,  my  love !"  she  threw  herself 
upon  him  and  kissed  him. 

I  went  to  my  room  and  changed  my 
clothes,  but  I  remained  there  till  the  even- 
ing. The  violence  of  the  storm  had 
passed  over  us,  but  the  rain  had  settled 
down  to  a  drizzle.  On  descending  to  din- 
ner I  found  that  the  change  in  the  weather 
had  already  broken  up  our  party.  The 
Mellifonts  had  departed  in  a  carriage  and 
four,  they  had  been  followed  by  others,  and 
several  vehicles  had  been  bespoken  for  the 
morning.  Blanche  Adney's  was  one  of 
them,  and  on  the  pretext  that  she  had 
preparations  to  make,  she  quitted  us  di- 
rectly after  dinner.  Clare  Vawdrey  asked 
me  what  was  the  matter  with  her — she  sud- 
denly appeared  to  dislike  him.  I  forget 
what  answer  I  gave,  but  I  did  my  best  to 
comfort  him  by  driving  away  with  him  the 
next  day.  Mrs.  Adney  had  vanished  when 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE  75 

we  came  down;  but  they  made  up  their 
quarrel  in  London,  for  he  finished  his  play, 
which  she  produced.  I  must  add  that  she 
is  still,  nevertheless,  in  want  of  the  great 
part.  I  have  a  beautiful  one  in  my  head, 
but  she  doesn't  come  to  see  me  to  stir  me 
up  about  it.  Lady  Mellifont  always  drops 
me  a  kind  word  when  we  meet,  but  that 
doesn't  console  me. 


LORD    BEAUPRE 


LORD   BEAUPRE 
I 

SOME  reference  had  been  made  to  North- 
erley,  which  was  within  an  easy  drive,  and 
Firminger  described  how  he  had  dined  there 
the  night  before  and  had  found  a  lot  of  peo- 
ple. Mrs.  Ashbury,  one  of  the  two  visitors, 
inquired  who  these  people  might  be,  and  he 
mentioned  half  a  dozen  names,  among  which 
was  that  of  young  Raddle,  which  had  been 
a  good  deal  on  people's  lips,  and  even  in 
the  newspapers,  on  the  occasion,  still  re- 
cent, of  his  stepping  into  the  fortune,  excep- 
tionally vast  even  as  the  product  of  a  patent 
glue,  left  him  by  a  father  whose  ugly  name 
on  all  the  vacant  spaces  of  the  world  had 
exasperated  generations  of  men. 

"  Oh,  is  he  there  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Ashbury, 
in  a  tone  which  might  have  been  taken  as  a 


80  LORD    BEAUPRE 

vocal  rendering  of  the  act  of  pricking  up 
one's  ears.  She  didn't  hand  on  the  infor- 
mation to  her  daughter,  who  was  talking — 
if  a  beauty  of  so  few  phrases  could  have 
been  said  to  talk — with  Mary  Gosselin,  but 
in  the  course  of  a  few  moments  she  put 
down  her  teacup  with  a  failure  of  suavity, . 
and,  getting  up,  gave  the  girl  a  poke  with 
her  parasol.  "  Come,  Maud,  we  must  be 
stirring." 

"You  pay  us  a  very  short  visit,"  said 
Mrs.  Gosselin,  intensely  demure  over  the 
fine  web  of  her  knitting.  Mrs.  Ashbury 
looked  hard  for  an  instant  into  her  bland 
eyes,  then  she  gave  poor  Maud  another  poke. 
She  alluded  to  a  reason  and  expressed  re- 
grets ;  but  she  got  her  daughter  into  motion, 
and  Guy  Firminger  passed  through  the  gar- 
den with  the  two  ladies,  to  put  them  into 
their  carriage.  Mrs.  Ashbury  protested  par- 
ticularly against  any  further  escort.  While 
he  was  absent  the  other  parent  and  child, 
sitting  together  on  their  pretty  lawn  in  the 
yellow  light  of  the  August  afternoon,  talked 
of  the  frightful  way  Maud  Ashbury  had 
"gone  off,"  and  of  something  else  as  to 


LORD    BEAUPRE  Si 

which  there  was  more  to  say  when  their 
third  visitor  came  back. 

"Don't  think  me  grossly  inquisitive  if  I 
ask  you  where  they  told  the  coachman  to 
drive,"  said  Mary  Gosselin,  as  the  young 
man  dropped  near  her  into  a  low  wicker 
chair,  stretching  his  long  legs  as  if  he  had 
been  one  of  the  family. 

Firminger  stared.  "  Upon  my  word,  I 
didn't  particularly  notice ;  but  I  think  the 
old  lady  said  *  Home.'" 

"  There,  mamma  dear  !"  the  girl  exclaimed 
triumphantly. 

But  Mrs.  Gosselin  only  knitted  on,  per- 
sisting in  profundity.  She  replied  that 
"  Home "  was  a  feint,  that  Mrs.  Ashbury 
would  already  have  given  another  order,  and 
that  it  was  her  wish  to  hurry  off  to  North- 
erley  that  had  made  her  keep  them  from 
going  with  her  to  the  carriage,  in  which  they 
would  have  seen  her  take  a  suspected  di- 
rection. Mary  explained  to  Guy  Firminger 
that  her  mother  had  perceived  poor  Mrs. 
Ashbury  to  be  frantic  to  reach  the  house  at 
which  she  had  heard  that  Mr.  Raddle  was 
staying.  The  young  man  stared  again,  and 

6 


82  LORD    BEAUPRE 

wanted  to  know  what  she  desired  to  do  with 
Mr.  Raddle.  Mary  replied  that  her  mother 
would  tell  him  what  Mrs.  Ashbury  desired 
to  do  with  poor  Maud. 

"  What  all  Christian  mothers  desire,"  said 
Mrs.  Gosselin.  "  Only  she  doesn't  know 
how." 

"  To  marry  the  dear  child  to  Mr.  Rad- 
dle," Mary  added,  smiling. 

Firminger's  vagueness  expanded  with  the 
subject.  "  Do  you  mean  you  want  to  marry 
your  dear  child  to  that  little  cad  ?*'  he  asked, 
of  the  elder  lady. 

"  I  speak  of  the  general  duty — not  of  the 
particular  case,"  said  Mrs.  Gosselin. 

"  Mamma  does  know  how,"  Mary  went  on. 

"  Then,  why  ain't  you  married  ?" 

"  Because  we're  not  acting,  like  the  Ash- 
burys,  with  injudicious  precipitation.  Is 
that  correct  ?"  the  girl  demanded,  laughing, 
of  her  mother. 

"  Laugh  at  me,  my  dear,  as  much  as  you 
like — it's  very  lucky  you've  got  me,"  Mrs. 
Gosselin  declared. 

"  She  means  I  can't  manage  for  myself," 
said  Mary,  to  the  visitor. 


LORD    BEAUPRE  83 

"  What  nonsense  you  talk !"  Mrs.  Gosse- 
lin  murmured,  counting  stitches. 

"I  can't,  mamma,  I  can't;  I  admit  it," 
Mary  continued. 

"But  injudicious  precipitation  and — what's 
the  other  thing  ? — creeping  prudence,  seem 
to  come  out  in  very  much  the  same  place," 
the  young  man  objected. 

"  Do  you  mean  since  I  too  wither  on  the 
tree?" 

"  It  only  comes  back  to  saying  how  hard 
it  is  nowadays  to  marry  one's  daughters," 
said  the  lucid  Mrs.  Gosselin,  saving  Firmin- 
ger,  however,  the  trouble  of  an  ingenious 
answer.  "  I  don't  contend  that,  at  the  best, 
it's  easy." 

But  Guy  Firminger  would  not  have  struck 
you  as  capable  of  much  conversational  ef- 
fort as  he  lounged  there  in  the  summer 
softness,  with  ironic  familiarities,  like  one  of 
the  old  friends  wrho  rarely  deviate  into  sin- 
cerity. He  was  a  robust  but  loose-limbed 
young  man,  with  a  well-shaped  head  and  a 
face  smooth,  fair,  and  kind.  He  was  in 
knickerbockers,  and  his  clothes,  which  had 
seen  service,  were  composed  of  articles  that 


84  LORD    BEAUPRE 

didn't  match.  His  laced  boots  were  dusty 
— he  had  evidently  walked  a  certain  dis- 
tance ;  an  indication  confirmed  by  the 
lingering,  sociable  way  in  which,  in  his 
basket-seat,  he  tilted  himself  towards  Mary 
Gosselin.  It  pointed  to  a  pleasant  reason 
for  a  long  walk.  This  young  lady,  of  five- 
and-twenty,  had  black  hair  and  blue  eyes  ;  a 
combination  often  associated  with  the  effect 
of  beauty.  The  beauty  in  this  case,  how- 
ever, was  dim  and  latent,  not  vulgarly  obvi- 
ous, and  if  her  height  and  slenderness  gave 
that  impression  of  length  of  line  which,  as 
we  know,  is  the  fashion,  Mary  Gosselin  had, 
on  the  other  hand,  too  much  expression  to 
be  generally  admired.  Every  one  thought 
her  intellectual ;  a  few  of  the  most  simple- 
minded  even  thought  her  plain.  What  Guy 
Firminger  thought — or  rather  what  he  took 
for  granted,  for  he  was  not  built  up  on 
depths  of  reflection — will  probably  appear 
from  this  narrative. 

"  Yes,  indeed  ;  things  have  come  to  a  pass 
that's  awful  for  us,"  the  girl  announced. 

"  For  us,  you  mean,"  said  Firminger. 
"  We're  hunted  like  the  ostrich ;  we're 


LORD    BEAUPRE  85 

trapped  and  stalked  and  run  to  earth.  We 
go  in  fear — I  assure  you  we  do." 

"Are  you  hunted,  Guy?"  Mrs.  Gosselin 
asked,  with  an  inflection  of  her  own. 

"  Yes,  Mrs.  Gosselin,  even  moi  qui  vous 
parle,  the  ordinary  male  of  commerce,  incon- 
ceivable as  it  may  appear.  I  know  some- 
thing about  it." 

"  And  of  whom  do  you  go  in  fear  ?''  Mary 
Gosselin  took  up  an  uncut  book  and  a 
paper-knife  which  she  had  laid  down  on 
the  advent  of  the  other  visitors. 

"  My  dear  child,  of  Diana  and  her  nymphs, 
of  the  spinster  at  large.  She's  always  out 
with  her  rifle.  And  it  isn't  only  that ;  you 
know  there's  always  a  second  gun,  a  walk- 
ing arsenal,  at  her  heels.  I  forget,  for  the 
moment,  who  Diana's  mother  was,  and  the 
genealogy  of  the  nymphs  ;  but  not  only  do 
the  old  ladies  know  the  younger  ones  are 
out — they  distinctly  go  with  them." 

"Who  was  Diana's  mother,  my  dear?" 
Mrs.  Gosselin  inquired  of  her  daughter. 

"  She  was  a  beautiful  old  lady  with  pink 
ribbons  in  her  cap  and  a  genius  for  knit- 
ting," the  girl  replied,  cutting  her  book. 


86  LORD    BEAUPRE 

"  Oh,  I'm  not  speaking  of  you  two  dears  ; 
you're  not  like  any  one  else ;  you're  an  im- 
mense comfort,"  said  Guy  Firminger.  "  But 
they've  reduced  it  to  a  science,  and  I  as- 
sure you  that  if  one  were  any  one  in  partic- 
ular, if  one  were  not  protected  by  one's 
obscurity,  one's  life  would  be  a  burden. 
Upon  my  honor,  one  wouldn't  escape.  I've 
seen  it,  I've  watched  them.  Look  at  poor 
Beaupre — look  at  little  Raddle  over  there. 
I  object  to  him,  but  I  bleed  for  him." 

"  Lord  Beaupre  won't  marry  again,"  said 
Mrs.  Gosselin,  with  an  air  of  conviction. 

"  So  much  the  worse  for  him !" 

"  Come  —  that's  a  concession  to  our 
charms !"  Mary  laughed. 

But  the  ruthless  young  man  explained 
away  his  concession.  "  I  mean  that  to  be 
married  's  the  only  protection — or  else  to  be 
engaged." 

"  To  be  permanently  engaged — wouldn't 
that  do  ?"  Mary  Gosselin  asked. 

"Beautifully — I  would  try  it  if  I  were  a 
parti." 

"  And  how's  the  little  boy  ?"  Mrs.  Gosse- 
lin presently  inquired. 


LORD    BEAUPRE  87 

"What  little  boy?" 

"Your  little  cousin  —  Lord  Beaupre's 
child;  isn't  it  a  boy?" 

"  Oh,  poor  little  beggar,  he  isn't  up  to 
much.  He  was  awfully  cut  up  by  scarlet 
fever." 

"  You're  not  the  rose  indeed,  but  you're 
tolerably  near  it,"  the  elder  lady  presently 
continued. 

"  What  do  you  call  near  it  ?  Not  even  in  the 
same  garden — not  in  any  garden  at  all,  alas !" 

"  There  are  three  lives— but  after  all !" 

"  Dear  lady,  don't  be  homicidal !" 

"What  do  you  call  the  'rose?'"  Mary 
asked  of  her  mother. 

"  The  title,"  said  Mrs.  Gosselin,  promptly 
but  softly. 

Something  in  her  tone  made  Firminger 
laugh  aloud.  "You  don't  mention  the 
property." 

"Oh,  I  mean  the  whole  thing." 

"Is  the  property  very  large?"  said  Mary 
Gosselin. 

"  Fifty  thousand  a  year,"  her  mother  re- 
sponded ;  at  which  the  young  man  laughed 


88  LORD    BEAUPRE 

"Take  care,  mamma,  -or  we  shall  be 
thought  to  be  out  with  our  guns !"  the  girl 
interposed ;  a  recommendation  that  drew 
from  Guy  Firminger  the  just  remark  that 
there  would  be  time  enough  for  that  when 
his  prospects  should  be  worth  speaking  of. 
He  leaned  over  to  pick  up  his  hat  and  stick, 
as  if  it  were  his  time  to  go ;  but  he  didn't 
go  for  another  quarter  of  an  hour,  and  dur- 
ing these  minutes  his  prospects  received 
some  frank  consideration.  He  was  Lord 
Beaupre"s  first  cousin,  and  the  three  inter- 
vening lives  were  his  lordship's  own,  that 
of  his  little  sickly  son,  and  that  of  his  uncle 
the  Major,  who  was  also  Guy's  uncle,  and 
with  whom  the  young  man  was  at  present 
staying.  It  was  from  homely  Trist,  the 
Major's  house,  that  he  had  walked  over  to 
Mrs.  Gosselin's.  Frank  Firminger,  who  had 
married  in  youth  a  woman  with  something 
of  her  own,  and  eventually  left  the  army,  had 
nothing  but  girls,  but  he  was  only  of  middle 
age,  and  might  possibly  still  have  a  son.  At 
any  rate,  his  life  was  a  very  good  one.  Beau- 
pre  might  marry  again,  and,  marry  or  not, 
he  was  barely  thirty-three,  and  might  live  to 


LORD    BEAUPRE  89 

a  great  age.  The  child,  moreover,  poor 
little  devil,  would  doubtless,  with  the  grow- 
ing consciousness  of  an  incentive  (there  was 
none  like  feeling  you  were  in  people's  way), 
develop  a  capacity  for  duration  ;  so  that  al- 
together Guy  professed  himself,  with  the 
best  will  in  the  world,  unable  to  take  a  rosy 
view  of  the  disappearance  of  obstacles.  He 
treated  the  subject  with  a  jocularity  that,  in 
view  of  the  remoteness  of  his  chance,  was 
not  wholly  tasteless,  and  the  discussion,  be- 
tween old  friends  and  in  the  light  of  this 
extravagance,  was  less  crude  than  perhaps 
it  sounds.  The  young  man  quite  declined 
to  see  any  latent  brilliancy  in  his  future. 
They  had  all  been  lashing  him  up,  his  poor 
dear  mother,  his  uncle  Frank,  and  Beaupre 
as  well,  to  make  that  future  political ;  but 
even  if  he  should  get  in  (he  was  nursing — 
oh,  so  languidly  !  —  a  possible  opening),  it 
would  only  be  into  the  shallow  edge  of  the 
stream.  He  would  stand  there  like  a  tall 
idiot,  with  the  water  up  to  his  ankles.  He 
didn't  know  how  to  swim — in  that  element; 
he  didn't  know  how  to  do  anything. 

"  I  think  you're  very  perverse,  my  dear," 


QO  LORD    BEAUPRE 

said  Mrs.  Gosselin.  "  I'm  sure  you  have 
great  dispositions." 

"  For  what — except  for  sitting  here  and 
talking  with  you  and  Mary?  I  revel  in 
this  sort  of  thing,  but  I  scarcely  like  any- 
thing else." 

"You'd  do  very  well,  if  you  weren't  so 
lazy,"  Mary  said.  "  I  believe  you're  the 
very  laziest  person  in  the  world." 

"So  do  I — the  very  laziest  in  the  world," 
the  young  man  contentedly  replied.  "  But 
how  can  I  regret  it,  when  it  keeps  me  so 
quiet,  when  (I  might  even  say)  it  makes  me 
so  amiable?" 

"You'll  have,  one  of  these  days,  to  get 
over  your  quietness,  and  perhaps  even  a 
little  over  your  amiability,"  Mrs.  Gosselin 
sagaciously  stated. 

"I  devoutly  hope  not." 

"You'll  have  to  perform  the  duties  of 
your  position." 

"  Do  you  mean  keep  my  stump  of  a 
broom  in  order  and  my  crossing  irre- 
proachable ?" 

"You  may  say  what  you  like;  you  will  be 
a  parti"  Mrs.  Gosselin  continued. 


LORD    BEAUPRE  QI 

"Well,  then,  if  the  worst  comes  to  the 
worst,  I  shall  do  what  I  said  just  now :  I 
shall  get  some  good  plausible  girl  to  see 
me  through." 

"The  proper  way  to  'get'  her  will  be  to 
marry  her.  After  you're  married  you  won't 
be  a. parti" 

"Dear  mamma,  he'll  think  you're  already 
levelling  your  rifle  f  Mary  Gosselin  laugh- 
ingly wailed. 

Guy  Firminger  looked  at  her  a  moment. 
"  I  say,  Mary,  wouldn't  you  do  ?" 

"For  the  good  plausible  girl?  Should  I 
be  plausible  enough  ?" 

"Surely — what  could  be  more  natural? 
Everything  would  seem  to  contribute  to  the 
suitability  of  our  alliance.  I  should  be 
known  to  have  known  you  for  years — from 
childhood's  sunny  hour;  I  should  be  known 
to  have  bullied  you,  and  even  to  have  been 
bullied  by  you,  in  the  period  of  pinafores. 
My  relations  from  a  tender  age  with  your 
brother,  which  led  to  our  school  -  room 
romps  in  holidays,  and  to  the  happy  foot- 
ing on  which  your  mother  has  always 
been  so  good  as  to  receive  me  here,  would 


92  LORD    BEAUPRE 

add  to  all  the  presumptions  of  intimacy. 
People  would  accept  such  a  conclusion  as 
inevitable." 

"  Among  all  your  reasons  you  don't  men- 
tion the  young  lady's  attractions,"  said 
Mary  Gosselin. 

Firminger  stared  a  moment,  his  clear 
eye  lighted  by  his  happy  thought.  "I  don't 
mention  the  young  man's.  They  would  be 
so  obvious,  on  one  side  and  the  other,  as 
to  be  taken  for  granted." 

"And  is  it  your  idea  that  one  should  pre- 
tend to  be  engaged  to  you  all  one's  life?" 

"Oh  no;  simply  till  I  should  have  had 
time  to  look  round.  I'm  determined  not 
to  be  hustled  and  bewildered  into  matri- 
mony—  to  be  dragged  to  the  shambles 
before  I  know  where  I  am.  With  such  an 
arrangement  as  the  one  I  speak  of  I  should 
be  able  to  take  my  time,  to  keep  my  head, 
to  make  my  choice." 

"And  how  would  the  young  lady  make 
hers  ?" 

"  How  do  you  mean,  hers  ?" 

"The   selfishness   of   men  is  something 

O 

exquisite.     Suppose  the  young  lady — if  it's 


LORD    BEAUPRE  93 

conceivable  that  you  should  find  one  idiotic 
enough  to  be  a  party  to  such  a  transaction 
— suppose  the  poor  girl  herself  should  hap- 
pen to  wish  to  be  really  engaged  ?" 

Guy  Firminger  thought  a  moment,  with 
his  slow  but  not  stupid  smile.  "  Do  you 
mean  to  meT"1 

"  To  you — or  to  some  one  else." 

"  Oh,  if  she'd  give  me  notice,  I'd  let  her  off." 

"  Let  her  off  till  you  could  find  a  substi- 
tute ?" 

"Yes;  but  I  confess  it  would  be  a  great 
inconvenience.  People  wouldn't  take  the 
second  one  so  seriously." 

"  She  would  have  to  make  a  sacrifice;  she 
would  have  to  wait  till  you  should  know 
where  you  were,"  Mrs.  Gosselin  suggested. 

"Yes,  but  where  would  her  advantage 
come  in  ?"  Mary  persisted. 

"  Only  in  the  pleasure  of  charity ;  the 
moral  satisfaction  of  doing  a  fellow  a  good 
turn,"  said  Firminger. 

"  You  must  think  people  are  keen  to 
oblige  you  !" 

"Ah,  but  surely  I  could  count  on  you, 
couldn't  I  ?"  the  young  man  asked. 


94 


LORD    BEAUPRE 


Mary  had  finished  cutting  her  book;  she 
got  up  and  flung  it  down  on  the  tea-table. 
"  What  a  preposterous  conversation !"  she 
exclaimed  with  force,  tossing  the  words 
from  her  as  she  tossed  her  book  j  and, 
looking  round  her  vaguely  a  moment,  with- 
out meeting  Guy  Firminger's  eyes,  she 
walked  away  to  the  house. 

Firminger  sat  watching  her;  then  he  said 
serenely  to  her  mother:  "Why  has  our 
Mary  left  us  ?" 

"  She  has  gone  to  get  something,  I  sup- 
pose." 

"What  has  she  gone  to  get?'' 

"  A  little  stick,  to  beat  you,  perhaps." 

"You  don't  mean  I've  been  objection- 
able ?" 

"Dear,  no  —  I'm  joking.  One  thing  is 
very  certain,"  pursued  Mrs.  Gosselin; 
"that  you  ought  to  work — to  try  to  get  on 
exactly  as  if  nothing  could  ever  happen. 
Oughtn't  you?"  She  threw  off  the  ques- 
tion mechanically  as  her  visitor  continued 
silent. 

"  I'm  sure  she  doesn't  like  it !"  he  ex- 
claimed, without  heeding  her  appeal. 


LORD    BEAUPRE  95 

"  Doesn't  like  what  ?" 

"  My  free  play  of  mind.  It's  perhaps  too 
much  in  the  key  of  our  old  romps." 

"  You're  very  clever ;  she  always  likes 
that"  said  Mrs.  Gosselin.  " You  ought  to 
go  in  for  something  serious,  for  something 
honorable,"  she  continued,  "  just  as  much 
as  if  you  had  nothing  at  all  to  look  to." 

"  Words  of  wisdom,  dear  Mrs.  Gosse- 
lin," Firminger  replied,  rising  slowly  from 
his  relaxed  attitude.  "  But  what  hare  I  to 
look  to  ?" 

She  raised  her  mild,  deep  eyes  to  him  as 
he  stood  before  her — she  might  have  been  a 
fairy  godmother.  "  Everything  !" 

"  But  you  know  I  can't  poison  them  !" 

"  That  won't  be  necessary." 

He  looked  at  her  an  instant;  then,  with  a 
laugh,  "  One  might  think  you  would  under- 
take it !" 

"  I  almost  would — for  you.    Good-bye." 

"  Take  care — if  they  should  be  carried 
off!"  But  Mrs.  Gosselin  only  repeated  her 
good-bye,  and  the  young  man  departed  be- 
fore Mary  had  come  back. 


II 


NEARLY  two  years  after  Guy  Firminger 
had  spent  that  friendly  hour  in  Mrs.  Gos- 
selin's  little  garden  in  Hampshire  this  far- 
seeing  woman  was  enabled  (by  the  return 
of  her  son,  who  in  New  York,  in  an  English 
bank,  occupied  a  position  in  which  they  all 
rejoiced,  to  such  great  things  might  it  pos- 
sibly lead)  to  resume  possession,  for  the 
season,  of  the  little  house  in  London  which 
her  husband  had  left  her  to  live  in,  but 
which  her  native  thrift,  in  determining  her 
to  let  it  for  a  term,  had  converted  into  a 
source  of  income.  Hugh  Gosselin,  who 
was  thirty  years  old,  and  at  twenty- three, 
before  his  father's  death,  had  been  de- 
spatched to  America  to  exert  himself,  was 
understood  to  be  doing  very  well — so  well 
that  his  devotion  to  the  interests  of  his 
employers  had  been  rewarded,  for  the 
first  time,  with  a  real  holiday.  He  was  to 


LORD    BEAUPRE  97 

remain  in  England  from  May  to  August, 
undertaking,  as  he  said,  to  make  it 
all  right  if  during  this  time  his  mother 
should  occupy  (to  contribute  to  his  enter- 
tainment) the  habitation  in  Chester  Street. 
He  was  a  small,  preoccupied  young  man, 
with  a  sharpness  as  acquired  as  a  new  hat; 
he  struck  his  mother  and  sister  as  intensely 
American.  For  the  first  few  days  after  his 
arrival  they  were  startled  by  his  intona- 
tions, though  they  admitted  that  they  had 
an  escape  when  he  reminded  them  that 
he  might  have  brought  with  him  an  accent 
embodied  in  a  wife. 

"When  you  do  take  one,"  said  Mrs.  Gos- 
selin,  who  regarded  such  an  accident  over 
there  as  inevitable,  "  you  must  charge  her 
high  for  it." 

It  was  not  with  this  question,  however, 
that  the  little  family  in  Chester  Street  was 
mainly  engaged,  but  with  the  last  incident 
in  the  extraordinary  succession  of  events 
which,  like  a  chapter  of  romance,  had  in 
the  course  of  a  few  months  converted  their 
vague  and  impecunious  friend  into  a  per- 
sonage envied  and  honored.  It  was  as  if 

7 


9S  LORD    BEAUPRE 

a  blight  had  been  cast  on  all  Guy  Firmin- 
ger's  hinderances.  On  the  day  Hugh 
Gosselin  sailed  from  New  York  the  delicate 
little  boy  at  Bosco  had  succumbed  to  an 
attack  of  diphtheria.  His  father  had  died 
of  typhoid  the  previous  winter  at  Naples ; 
his  uncle,  a  few  weeks  later,  had  had  a  fatal 
accident  in  the  hunting-field.  So  strangely, 
so  rapidly  had  the  situation  cleared  up,  had 
his  fate  and  theirs  worked  for  him.  Guy 
had  opened  his  eyes  one  morning  to  an 
earldom  which  carried  with  it  a  fortune  not 
alone  nominally  but  really  great.  Mrs. 
Gosselin  and  Mary  had  not  written  to  him, 
but  they  knew  he  was  at  Bosco ;  he  had 
remained  there  after  the  funeral  of  the 
late  little  lord.  Mrs.  Gosselin,  who  heard 
everything,  had  heard  somehow  that  he  was 
behaving  with  the  greatest  consideration, 
giving  the  guardians,  the  trustees,  whatever 
they  were  called,  plenty  of  time  to  do 
everything.  Everything  was  comparatively 
simple ;  in  the  absence  of  collaterals  there 
were  so  few  other  people  concerned.  The 
principal  relatives  were  poor  Frank  Fir- 
minger's  widow  and  her  girls,  who  had 


LORD   BEAUPRE  99 

seen  themselves  so  near  to  new  honors 
and  comforts.  Probably  the  girls  would 
expect  their  cousin  Guy  to  marry  one  of 
them,  and  think  it  the  least  he  could 
decently  do ;  a  view  the  young  man  him- 
self (if  he  were  very  magnanimous)  might 
possibly  embrace.  The  question  would  be 
whether  he  would  be  very  magnanimous. 
These  young  ladies  exhausted  in  their  three 
persons  the  numerous  varieties  of  plain- 
ness. On  the  other  hand,  Guy  Firminger — 
or  Lord  Beaupre,  as  one  would  have  to 
begin  to  call  him  now — was  unmistakably 
kind.  Mrs.  Gosselin  appealed  to  her  son 
as  to  whether  their  noble  friend  were  not 
unmistakably  kind. 

"  Of  course  I've  known  him  always,  and 
that  time  he  came  out  to  America — when 
was  it  ?  four  years  ago — I  saw  him  every 
day.  I  like  him  awfully,  and  all  that ;  but 
since  you  push  me,  you  know,"  said  Hugh 
Gosselin,  "  I'm  bound  to  say  that  the  first 
thing  to  mention  in  any  description  of  him 
would  be — if  you  wanted  to  be  quite  correct 
— that  he's  unmistakably  selfish." 

"  I  see — I  see,"  Mrs.  Gosselin  unblush- 


100  LORD    BEAUPRE 

ingly  replied.  "  Of  course  I  know  what  you 
mean,"  she  added,  in  a  moment.  "  But  is 
he  any  more  so  than  any  one  else  ?  Every 
one's  unmistakably  selfish." 

"  Every  one  but  you  and  Mary,"  said  the 
young  man. 

"  And  you,  dear !"  his  mother  smiled. 
"  But  a  person  may  be  kind,  you  know — 
mayn't  he?  —  at  the  same  time  that  he  is 
selfish.  There  are  different  sorts." 

"  Different  sorts  of  kindness  ?"  Hugh 
Gosselin  asked,  with  a  laugh ;  and  the  in- 
quiry undertaken  by  his  mother  occupied 
them  for  the  moment,  demanding  a  subtlety 
of  treatment  from  which  they  were  not  con- 
scious of  shrinking,  of  which  rather  they  had 
an  idea  that  they  were  perhaps  exceptionally 
capable.  They  came  back  to  the  temperate 
view  that  Guy  would  never  put  himself  out, 
would  probably  never  do  anything  great, 
but  might  show  himself  all  the  same  a  de- 
lightful member  of  society.  Yes,  he  was 
probably  selfish,  like  other  people ;  but  un- 
like most  of  them  he  was,  somehow,  ami- 
ably, attachingly,  sociably,  almost  lovably 
selfish.  Without  doing  anything  great  he 


LORD 


foi 


would  yet  be  a  great  success — a  big,  pleasant, 
gossiping,  lounging,  and,  in  its  way,  doubt- 
less very  splendid,  presence.  He  would  have 
no  ambition,  and  it  was  ambition  that  made 
selfishness  ugly.  Hugh  and  his  mother 
were  sure  of  this  last  point  until  Mary,  be- 
fore whom  the  discussion,  when  it  reached 
this  stage,  happened  to  be  carried  on,  check- 
ed them  by  asking  whether  that,  on  the  con- 
trary, were  not  just  what  was  supposed  to 
make  it  fine. 

"Oh,  he  only  wants  to  be  comfortable," 
said  her  brother  •  "  but  he  docs  want  it !" 

"  There'll  be  a  tremendous  rush  for  him," 
Mrs.  Gosselin  prophesied  to  her  son. 

"  Oh,  he'll  never  marry.  It  will  be  too 
much  trouble." 

"  It's  done  here  without  any  trouble — for 
the  men.  One  sees  how  long  you've  been 
out  of  the  country." 

"  There  was  a  girl  in  New  York  whom  he 
might  have  married — he  really  liked  her. 
But  he  wouldn't  turn  round  for  her." 

"  Perhaps  she  wouldn't  turn  round  for 
him"  said  Mary. 

"  I  dare  say  she'll  turn  round  now"  Mrs. 


BEAUPRE 


Gosselin  rejoined  ;  on  which  Hugh  men- 
tioned that  there  was  nothing  to  be  feared 
from  her,  all  her  revolutions  had  been  ac- 
complished. He  added  that  nothing  would 
make  any  difference  —  so  intimate  was  his 
conviction  that  Beaupre  would  preserve  his 
independence. 

"  Then  I  think  he's  not  so  selfish  as  you 
say,"  Mary  declared  ;  "  or,  at  any  rate,  one 
will  never  know  whether  he  is.  Isn't  married 
life  the  great  chance  to  show  it  ?" 

"  Your  father  never  showed  it,"  said  Mrs. 
Gosselin  ;  and  as  her  children  were  silent 
in  presence  of  this  tribute  to  the  depart- 
ed, she  added,  smiling,  "  Perhaps  you  think 
that  /  did  !"  They  embraced  her,  to  indi- 
cate what  they  thought,  and  the  conver- 
sation ended  when  she  had  remarked  that 
Lord  Beaupre  was  a  man  who  would  be  per- 
fectly easy  to  manage  after  marriage,  with 
Hugh's  exclaiming  that  this  was  doubtless 
exactly  why  he  wished  to  keep  out  of  it. 

Such  was  evidently  his  wish,  as  they  were 
able  to  judge  in  Chester  Street  when  he 
came  up  to  town.  He  appeared  there 
oftener  than  was  to  have  been  expected,  not 


LORD    BEAUPRE  103 

taking  himself,  in  his  new  character,  at  all 
too  seriously  to  find  stray  half-hours  for  old 
friends.  It  was  plain  that  he  was  going  to 
do  just  as  he  liked,  that  he  was  not  a  bit 
excited  or  uplifted  by  his  change  of  fortune. 
Mary  Gosselin  observed  that  he  had  no  im- 
agination— she  even  reproached  him  with 
the  deficiency  to  his  face  ;  an  incident  which 
showed  indeed  how  little  seriously  she  took 
him.  He  had  no  idea  of  playing  a  part,  and 
yet  he  would  have  been  clever  enough.  He 
wasn't  even  systematic  about  being  simple  ; 
his  simplicity  was  a  series  of  accidents  and 
indifferences.  Never  was  a  man  more  con- 
scientiously superficial.  There  were  matters 
on  which  he  valued  Mrs.  Gosselin's  judg- 
ment and  asked  her  advice  —  without,  as 
usually  appeared  later,  ever  taking  it ;  such 
questions,  mainly,  as  the  claims  of  a  prede- 
cessor's servants,  and  those,  in  respect  to 
social  intercourse,  of  the  clergyman's  family. 
He  didn't  like  his  parson — what  was  a  fellow 
to  do  when  he  didn't  like  his  parson  ? 
What  he  did  like  was  to  talk  with  Hugh 
about  American  investments,  and  it  was 
amusing  to  Hugh,  though  he  tried  not  to 


104  LORD    BEAUPRE 

show  his  amusement,  to  find  himself  looking 
at  Guy  Firminger  in  the  light  of  capital. 
To  Mary  he  addressed  from  the  first  the 
oddest  snatches  of  confidential  discourse, 
rendered  in  fact,  however,  by  the  levity  of 
his  tone,  considerably  less  confidental  than 
in  intention.  He  had  something  to  tell  her 
that  he  joked  about,  yet  without  admitting 
that  it  was  any  less  important  for  being 
laughable.  It  was  neither  more  nor  less 
than  that  Charlotte  Firminger,  the  eldest  of 
his  late  uncle's  four  girls,  had  designated  to 
him  in  the  clearest  manner  the  person  she 
considered  he  ought  to  marry.  She  appealed 
to  his  sense  of  justice,  she  spoke  and  wrote, 
or  at  any  rate  she  looked  and  moved,  she 
sighed  and  sang,  in  the  name  of  common 
honesty.  He  had  had  four  letters  from  her 
that  week,  and  to  his  knowledge  there  were 
a  series  of  people  in  London,  people  she 
could  bully,  whom  she  had  got  to  promise 
to  take  her  in  for  the  season.  She  was  go- 
ing to  be  on  the  spot,  she  was  going  to  fol- 
low him  up.  He  took  his  stand  on  common 
honesty,  but  he  had  a  mortal  horror  of 
Charlotte.  At  the  same  time,  when  a  girl 


LORD    BEAUPRE  105 

had  a  jaw  like  that  and  had  marked  you — 
really  marked  you,  mind,  you  felt  your  safety 
oozing  away.  He  had  given  them  during 
the  past  three  months,  all  those  terrible  girls, 
every  sort  of  present  that  Bond  Street  could 
supply ;  but  these  demonstrations  had  only 
been  held  to  constitute  another  pledge. 
Therefore  what  was  a  fellow  to  do  ?  Besides, 
there  were  other  portents  ;  the  air  was  thick 
with  them,  as  the  sky  over  battle-fields  was 
darkened  by  the  flight  of  vultures.  They 
were  flocking,  the  birds  of  prey,  from  every 
quarter,  and  every  girl  in  England,  by  Jove! 
was  going  to  be  thrown  at  his  head.  What 
had  he  done  to  deserve  such  a  fate  ?  He 
wanted  to  stop  in  England  and  see  all  sorts 
of  things  through  ;  but  how  could  he  stand 
there  and  face  such  a  charge  ?  Yet  what 
good  would  it  do  to  bolt  ?  Wherever  he 
should  go  there  would  be  fifty  of  them  there 
first.  On  his  honor  he  could  say  that  he 
didn't  deserve  it ;  he  had  never,  to  his  own 
sense,  been  a  flirt,  such  a  flirt  at  least  as  to 
have  given  any  one  a  handle.  He  appealed 
candidly  to  Mary  Gosselin  to  know  whether 
his  past  conduct  justified  such  penalties. 


106  LORD    BEAUPRE 

"  Have  I  been  a  flirt  —  have  I  given  any 
one  a  handle  ?"  he  inquired,  with  pathetic 
intensity. 

She  met  his  appeal  by  declaring  that  he 
had  been  awful,  committing  himself  right 
and  left;  and  this  manner  of  treating  his 
affliction  contributed  to  the  sarcastic  pub- 
licity (as  regarded  the  little  house  in  Chester 
Street)  which  presently  became  its  natural 
element.  Lord  Beaupre's  comical  and  yet 
thoroughly  grounded  view  of  his  danger  was 
soon  a  frequent  theme  among  the  Gosselins, 
who  however  had  their  own  reasons  for  not 
communicating  the  alarm.  They  had  no 
motive  for  concealing  their  interest  in  their 
old  friend,  but  their  allusions  to  him  among 
their  other  friends  may  be  said  on  the  whole 
to  have  been  studied.  His  state  of  mind 
recalled  of  course  to  Mary  and  her  mother 
the  queer  talk  about  his  prospects  that  they 
had  had  in  the  country  that  afternoon  on 
which  Mrs.  Gosselin  had  been  so  strangely 
prophetic  (she  confessed  that  she  had  had 
a  flash  of  divination :  the  future  had  been 
mysteriously  revealed  to  her),  and  poor  Guy, 
too,  had  seen  himself  quite  as  he  was  to  be. 


LORD    BEAUPRE  107 

He  had  seen  his  nervousness,  under  inevit- 
able pressure,  deepen  to  a  panic,  and  he 
now,  in  intimate  hours,  made  no  attempt  to 
disguise  that  a  panic  had  become  his  por- 
tion. It  was  a  fixed  idea  with  him  that  he 
should  fall  a  victim  to  woven  toils,  be 
caught  in  a  trap  constructed  with  superior 
science.  The  science  evolved  in  an  enter- 
prising age  by  this  branch  of  industry,  the 
manufacture  of  the  trap  matrimonial,  he 
had  terrible  anecdotes  to  illustrate ;  and 
what  had  he  on  his  lips  but  a  scientific  term 
when  he  declared,  as  he  perpetually  did, 
that  it  was  his  fate  to  be  hypnotized  ? 

Mary  Gosselin  reminded  him,  they  each 
in  turn  reminded  him,  that  his  safeguard 
was  to  fall  in  love;  were  he  once  to  put 
himself  under  that  protection,  all  of  the 
mothers  and  maids  in  Mayfair  would  not 
prevail  against  him.  He  replied  that  this 
was  just  the  impossibility ;  it  took  leisure 
and  calmness  and  opportunity  and  a  free 
mind  to  fall  in  love,  and  never  was  a  man 
less  open  to  such  experiences.  He  was 
literally  fighting  his  way.  He  reminded 
the  girl  of  his  old  fancy  for  pretending 


108  LORD    BEAUPRE 

already  to  have  disposed  of  his  hand  if  he 
could  put  that  hand  on  a  young  person 
who  would  like  him  well  enough  to  be 
willing  to  participate  in  the  fraud.  She 
would  have  to  place  herself  in  rather  a 
false  position,  of  course — have  to  take  a 
certain  amount  of  trouble ;  but  there  would, 
after  all,  be  a  good  deal  of  fun  in  it  (there 
was  always  fun  in  duping  the  world)  be- 
tween the  pair  themselves,  the  two  happy 
comedians. 

"  Why  should  they  both  be  happy?"  Mary 
Gosselin  asked.  "I  understand  why  you 
should;  but,  frankly,  I  don't  quite  grasp 
the  reason  of  her  pleasure." 

Lord  Beaupre,  with  his  sunny  human 
eyes,  thought  a  moment.  "  Why,  for  the 
lark,  as  they  say,  and  that  sort  of  thing.  I 
should  be  awfully  nice  to  her." 

"  She  would  require  indeed  to  be  in  want 
of  recreation !" 

"  Ah,  but  I  should  want  a  good  sort— a 
quiet,  reasonable  one,  you  know!"  he  some- 
what eagerly  interposed. 

"You're  too  delightful!"  Mary  Gosse- 
lin exclaimed,  continuing  to  laugh.  He 


LORD    BEAUPRE 


I09 


thanked  her  for  this  appreciation,  and  she 
returned  to  her  point — that  she  didn't  really 
see  the  advantage  his  accomplice  could 
hope  to  enjoy  as  her  compensation  for  ex- 
treme disturbance. 

Guy  Finninger  stared.  "  But  what  ex- 
treme disturbance  ?'' 

"Why,  it  would  take  a  lot  of  time;  it 
might  become  intolerable." 

"  You  mean  I  ought  to  pay  her — to  hire 
her  for  the  season  ?" 

Mary  Gosselin  considered  him  a  mo- 
ment. "  Wouldn't  marriage  come  cheaper 
at  once  ?"  she  asked,  with  a  quieter  smile. 

"  You  are  chaffing  me  !"  he  sighed,  for- 
givingly. "Of  course  she  would  have  to  be 
good-natured  enough  to  pity  me." 

"  Pity's  akin  to  love.  If  she  were  good- 
natured  enough  to  want  to  help  you,  she'd 
be  good-natured  enough  to  want  to  marry 
you.  That  would  be  her  idea  of  help." 

"Would  it  be  yours .?"  Lord  Beaupre  asked, 
rather  eagerly. 

"  You're  too  absurd !  You  must  sail 
your  own  boat !"  the  girl  answered,  turning 
away. 


HO  LORD    BEAUPRE 

That  evening  at  dinner  she  stated  to  her 
companions  that  she  had  never  seen  a 
fatuity  so  dense,  so  serene,  so  preposterous 
as  his  lordship's. 

" Fatuity,  my  dear!  what  do  you  mean?" 
her  mother  inquired. 

"  Oh,  mamma,  you  know  perfectly."  Mary 
Gosselin  spoke  with  a  certain  impatience. 

"  If  you  mean  he's  conceited,  I'm  bound 
to  say  I  don't  agree  with  you,"  her  brother 
observed.  "  He's  too  indifferent  to  every 
one's  opinion  for  that." 

"  He's  not  vain,  he's  not  proud,  he's  not 
pompous,"  said  Mrs.  Gosselin. 

Mary  was  silent  a  moment.  "  He  takes 
more  things  for  granted  than  any  one  I 
ever  saw." 

"What  sort  of  things?" 

"Well,  one's  interest  in  his  affairs." 

"  With  old  friends  surely  a  gentleman 
may." 

"Of  course,"  said  Hugh  Gosselin;  "old 
friends  have  in  turn  the  right  to  take  for 
granted  a  corresponding  interest  on  his 
part." 

"  Well,  who  could  be  nicer  to  us  than  he 


LORD    EEAUPRE  IIZ 

is,  or  come  to  see  us  oftener  ?"  his  mother 
asked. 

"  He  comes  exactly  for  the  purpose  I 
speak  of  —  to  talk  about  himself,"  said 
Mary. 

"There  are  thousands  of  girls  who  would 
be  delighted  with  his  talk,"  Mrs.  Gosselin 
returned. 

"  We  agreed  long  ago  that  he's  intensely 
selfish,"  the  girl  went  on ;  "  and  if  I  speak 
of  it  to-day,  it's  not  because  that  in  itself  is 
anything  of  a  novelty.  What  I'm  freshly 
struck  with  is  simply  that  he  more  shame- 
lessly shows  it." 

"He  shows  it,  exactly,"  said  Hugh;  "he 
shows  all  there  is.  There  it  is,  on  the 
surface ;  there  are  not  depths  of  it  under- 
neath." 

"He's  not  hard,"  Mrs.  Gosselin  contend- 
ed ;  "he's  not  impervious." 

"  Do  you  mean  he's  soft  ?"  Mary  asked. 

"  I  mean  he's  yielding."  And  Mrs.  Gos- 
selin, with  considerable  expression,  looked 
across  at  her  daughter.  She  added,  be- 
fore they  rose  from  dinner,  that  poor 
Beaupre  had  plenty  of  difficulties,  and  that 


112  LORD    BEAUPRE 

she  thought,  for  her  part,  they  ought  in 
common  loyalty  to  do  what  they  could  to 
assist  him. 

For  a  week  nothing  more  passed  between 
the  two  ladies  on  the  subject  of  their  noble 
friend,  and  in  the  course  of  this  week  they 
had  the  amusement  of  receiving  in  Chester 
Street  a  member  of  Hugh's  American  circle, 
Mr.  Bolton-Brown,  a  young  man  from  New 
York.  He  was  a  person  engaged  in  large 
affairs,  for  whom  Hugh  Gosselin  professed 
the  highest  regard,  from  whom  in  New 
York  he  had  received  much  hospitality,  and 
for  whose  advent  he  had  from  the  first 
prepared  his  companions.  Mrs.  Gosselin 
begged  the  amiable  stranger  to  stay  with 
them,  and  if  she  failed  to  overcome  his 
hesitation,  it  was  because  his  hotel  was 
near  at  hand  and  he  should  be  able  to  see 
them  often.  It  became  evident  that  he 
would  do  so,  and,  to  the  two  ladies,  as  the 
days  went  by,  equally  evident  that  no  ob- 
jection to  such  a  relation  was  likely  to 
arise.  Mr.  Bolton-Brown  was  delightfully 
fresh ;  the  most  usual  expressions  acquired 
on  his  lips  a  wellnigh  comical  novelty,  the 


LORD    BEAUPRE  113 

most  superficial  sentiments,  in  the  look 
with  which  he  accompanied  them,  a  really 
touching  sincerity.  He  was  unmarried  and 
good-looking,  clever  and  natural,  and  if  he 
was  not  very  rich,  was  at  least  very  free- 
handed. He  literally  strewed  the  path  of 
the  ladies  in  Chester  Street  with  flowers,  he 
choked  them  with  French  confectionery. 
Hugh,  however,  who  was  often  rather  mys- 
terious on  monetary  questions,  placed  in  a 
light  sufficiently  clear  the  fact  that  his 
friend  had  in  Wall  Street  (they  knew  all 
about  Wall  Street)  improved  each  shining 
hour.  They  introduced  him  to  Lord  Beau- 
pre,  who  thought  him  "  tremendous  fun,"  as 
Hugh  said,  and  who  immediately  declared 
that  the  four  must  spend  a  Sunday  at 
Bosco  a  week  or  two  later.  The  date  of 
this  visit  was  fixed — Mrs.  Gosselin  had 
uttered  a  comprehensive  acceptance ;  but 
after  Guy  Firminger  had  taken  leave  of 
them  (this  had  been  his  first  appearance 
since  the  odd  conversation  with  Mary),  our 
young  lady  confided  to  her  mother  that  she 
should  not  be  able  to  join  the  little  party. 
She  expressed  the  conviction  that  it  would 


II4  LORD    BEAUPRE 

be  all  that  was  essential  if  Mrs.  Gosselin 
should  go  with  the  two  others.  On  being 
pressed  to  communicate  the  reason  of  this 
aloofness,  Mary  was  able  to  give  no  better 
one  than  that  she  never  had  cared  for 
Bosco. 

"  What  makes  you  hate  him  so  ?"  her 
mother  presently  broke  out,  in  a  tone  which 
brought  the  red  to  the  girl's  cheek.  Mary 
denied  that  she  entertained  for  Lord  Beau- 
pre  any  sentiment  so  intense ;  to  which 
Mrs.  Gosselin  rejoined,  with  some  stern- 
ness and,  no  doubt,  considerable  wisdom : 
"  Look  out  what  you  do,  then,  or  you'll  be 
thought  by  every  one  to  be  in  love  with 
him !" 


Ill 


I  KNOW  not  whether  it  was  this  danger — 
that  of  appearing  to  be  moved  to  extremes 
—that  weighed  with  Mary  Gosselin;  at  any 
rate,  when  the  day,  arrived  she  had  decided 
to  be  perfectly  colorless  and  take  her 
share  of  Lord  Beaupre's  hospitality.  On 


LORD    BEAUPRE  115 

perceiving  that  the  house,  when  with  her 
companions  she  reached  it,  was  full  of 
visitors,  she  consoled  herself  with  the  sense 
that  such  a  share  would  be  of  the  smallest. 
She  even  wondered  whether  its  smallness 
might  not  be  caused  in  some  degree  by  the 
sufficiently  startling  presence,  in  this  strong- 
hold of  the  single  life,  of  Maud  Ashbury 
and  her  mother.  It  was  true  that  during  the 
Saturday  evening  she  never  saw  their  host 
address  an  observation  to  them;  but  she 
was  struck,  as  she  had  been  struck  before, 
with  the  girl's  cold  and  magnificent  beauty. 
It  was  very  well  to  say  she  had  "gone  off;" 
she  was  still  handsomer  than  any  one  else. 
She  had  failed  in  everything  she  had  tried ; 
the  campaign  undertaken  with  so  much 
energy  against  young  Raddle  had  been 
conspicuously  disastrous.  Young  Raddle 
had  married  his  grandmother,  or  a  person 
who  might  have  filled  such  an  office,  and 
Maud  was  a  year  older,  a  year  more  disap- 
pointed, and  a  year  more  ridiculous.  Never- 
theless one  could  scarcely  believe  that  a 
creature  with  such  advantages  would  always 
fail,  though,  indeed,  the  poor  girl  was  stupid 


XI6  LORD    BEAUPRE 

enough  to  be  a  warning.  Perhaps  it  would 
be  at  Bosco,  or  with  the  master  of  Bosco, 
that  fate  had  appointed  her  to  succeed. 
Except  Mary  herself,  she  was  the  only 
young  unmarried  woman  on  the  scene,  and 
Mary  glowed  with  the  generous  sense  of 
not  being  a  competitor.  She  felt  as  much 
out  of  the  question  as  the  blooming  wives, 
the  heavy  matrons,  who  formed  the  rest  of 
the  female  contingent.  Before  the  evening 
closed,  however,  her  host,  who,  she  saw, 
was  delightful  in  his  own  house,  mentioned 
to  her  that  he  had  a  couple  of  guests  who 
had  not  been  invited. 

"Not  invited?'' 

"  They  drove  up  to  my  door  as  they  might 
have  done  to  an  inn.  They  asked  for  rooms, 
and  complained  of  those  that  were  given 
them.  Don't  pretend  not  to  know  who 
they  are." 

"  Do  you  mean  the  Ashburys  ?  How 
amusing !" 

"  Don't  laugh ;  it  freezes  my  blood." 

"  Do  you  really  mean  you're  afraid  of 
them  ?" 

"  I  tremble  like  a  leaf.     Some  monstrous 


LORD    BEAUPRE  ny 

ineluctable  fate  seems  to  look  at  me  out  of 
their  eyes." 

"  That's  because  you  secretly  admire 
Maud.  How  can  you  help  it  ?  She's  ex- 
tremely good-looking,  and  if  you  get  rid  of 
her  mother,  she'll  become  a  very  nice  girl." 

"  It's  an  odious  thing,  no  doubt,  to  say 
about  a  young  person  under  one's  own  roof, 
but  I  don't  think  I  ever  saw  any  one  who 
happened  to  be  less  to  my  taste,"  said  Guy 
Firminger.  "I  don't  know  why  I  don't  turn 
them  out  even  now." 

Mary  persisted  in  sarcasm.  "Perhaps 
you  can  make  her  have  a  worse  time  by 
letting  her  stay." 

"Please  don't  laugh,"  her  interlocutor 
repeated.  "  Such  a  fact  as  I  have  men- 
tioned to  you  seems  to  me  to  speak  volumes 
— to  show  you  what  my  life  is." 

"  Oh,  your  life,  your  life  !"  Mary  Gosselin 
murmured,  with  her  mocking  note. 

"  Don't  you  agree  that  at  such  a  rate  it 
may  easily  become  impossible?" 

"  Many  people  would  change  with  you.  I 
don't  see  what  there  is  for  you  to  do  but  to 
bear  your  cross !" 


Il8  LORD    BEAUPRE 

"  That's  easy  talk !"  Lord  Beaupre 
sighed. 

"Especially  from  me,  do  you  mean?  How 
do  you  know  I  don't  bear  mine  ?" 

"Yours?"  he  asked,  vaguely. 

"  How  do  you  know  that  I'm  not  perse- 
cuted, that  my  footsteps  are  not  dogged, 
that  my  life  isn't  a  burden  ?" 

They  were  walking  in  the  old  gardens, 
the  proprietor  of  which,  at  this,  stopped 
short.  "  Do  you  mean  by  fellows  who  want 
to  marry  you  ?" 

His  tone  produced  on  his  companion's 
part  an  irrepressible  peal  of  hilarity ;  but 
she  walked  on  as  she  exclaimed :  "  You 
speak  as  if  there  couldn't  be  such  mad- 
men !" 

"Of  course  such  a  charming  girl  must  be 
made  up  to,"  Guy  Firminger  conceded  as 
he  overtook  her. 

"  I  don't  speak  of  it ;  I  keep  quiet  about 
it." 

"  You  realize  then,  at  any  rate,  that  it's 
all  horrid  when  you  don't  care  for  them." 

"  I  suffer  in  silence,  because  I  know  there 
are  worse  tribulations.  It  seems  to  me  you 


LORD    BEAUPRE  ng 

ought  to  remember  that,"  Mary  continued. 
"Your  cross  is  small  compared  with  your 
crown.  You've  everything  in  the  world  that 
most  people  most  desire,  and  I'm  bound  to 
say  I  think  your  life  is  made  very  comforta- 
ble for  you.  If  you're  oppressed  by  the 
quantity  of  interest  and  affection  you  in- 
spire, you  ought  simply  to  make  up  your 
mind  to  bear  up  and  be  cheerful  under  it." 
Lord  Beaupre  received  this  admonition 
with  perfect  good -humor;  he  professed 
himself  able  to  do  it  full  justice.  He  re- 
marked that  he  would  gladly  give  up  some 
of  his  material  advantages  to  be  a  little  less 
badgered,  and  that  he  had  been  quite  con- 
tent with  his  former  insignificance.  No 
doubt,  however,  such  annoyances  were  the 
essential  drawbacks  of  ponderous  promo- 
tions ;  one  had  to  pay  for  everything.  Mary 
was  quite  right  to  rebuke  him  ;  her  own  at- 
titude, as  a  young  woman  much  admired, 
was  a  lesson  to  his  irritability.  She  cut 
this  appreciation  short,  speaking  of  some- 
thing else ;  but  a  few  minutes  later  he 
broke  out  irrelevantly :  "  Why,  if  you  are 
hunted  as  well  as  I,  that  dodge  I  proposed 


120  LORD    BEAUPRE 

to  you  would  be  just  the  thing  for  us  both!" 
He  had  evidently  been  reasoning  it  out. 

Mary  Gosselin  was  silent  at  first ,  she  only 
paused  gradually  in  their  walk  at  a  point 
where  four  long  alleys  met.  In  the  centre 
of  the  circle,  on  a  massive  pedestal,  rose  in 
Italian  bronze  a  florid,  complicated  image, 
so  that  the  place  made  a  charming  Old 
World  picture.  The  grounds  of  Bosco  were 
stately  without  stiffness  and  full  of  marble 
terraces  and  misty  avenues.  The  fountains 
in  particular  were  royal.  The  girl  had  told 
her  mother  in  London  that  she  disliked  this 
fine  residence,  but  she  now  looked  round 
her  with  a  vague,  pleased,  sigh,  holding  up 
her  glass  (she  had  been  condemned  to  wear 
one,  with  a  long  handle,  since  she  was  fif- 
teen), to  consider  the  weather-stained  gar- 
den group.  "What  a  perfect  place  of  its 
kind  !"  she  musingly  exclaimed. 

"  Wouldn't  it  really  be  just  the  thing  ?" 
Lord  Beaupre  went  on,  with  the  eagerness 
of  his  idea. 

"  Wouldn't  what  be  just  the  thing  ?" 

"WThy,  the  defensive  alliance  we've  al- 
ready talked  of.  You  wanted  to  know  the 


LORD    BEAUPRE  121 

good  it  would  do  you.  Now  you  see  the 
good  it  would  do  you  !" 

"I  don't  like  practical  jokes,"  said  Mary. 
"The  remedy's  worse  than  the  disease," 
she  added ;  and  she  began  to  follow  one  of 
the  paths  that  took  the  direction  of  the 
house. 

Poor  Lord  Beaupre  was  absurdly  in  love 
with  his  invention ,  he  had  all  an  inventor's 
importunity.  He  kept  up  his  attempt  to 
place  his  "  dodge  "  in  a  favorable  light,  in 
spite  of  a  further  objection  from  his  com- 
panion, who  assured  him  that  it  was  one  of 
those  contrivances  which  break  down  in 
practice  in  just  the  proportion  in  which  they 
make  a  figure  in  theory.  At  last  she  said : 
"  I  was  not  sincere  just  now  when  I  told 
you  I'm  worried.  I'm  not  worried  !" 

"  They  don't  buzz  about  you  ?"  Guy  Fir- 
minger  asked. 

She  hesitated  an  instant.  "  They  buzz 
about  me ;  but  at  bottom  it's  flattering,  and 
I  don't  mind  it.  Now  please  drop  the  sub- 
ject." 

He  dropped  the  subject,  though  not  with- 
out congratulating  her  on  the  fact  that, 


122  LORD    BEAUPRE 

unlike  his  infirm  self,  she  could  keep  her 
head  and  her  temper.  His  infirmity  found 
a  trap  laid  for  it  before  they  had  proceeded 
twenty  yards,  as  was  proved  by  his  sudden 
exclamation  of  horror.  "  Good  heavens  — 
if  there  isn't  Lottie  !" 

Mary  perceived,  in  effect,  in  the  distance 
a  female  figure  coming  towards  them  over 
a  stretch  of  lawn,  and  she  simultaneously 
saw,  as  a  gentleman  passed  from  behind  a 
clump  of  shrubbery,  that  it  was  not  unat- 
tended. She  recognized  Charlotte  Fir- 
minger,  and  she  also  distinguished  the 
gentleman.  She  was  moved  to  larger  mirth 
at  the  dismay  expressed  by  poor  Firminger, 
but  she  was  able  to  articulate :  "  Walking 
with  Mr.  Brown  !" 

Lord  Beaupre  stopped  again  before  they 
were  joined  by  the  pair.  "  Does  he  buzz 
about  you  ?" 

"Mercy,  what  questions  you  ask!"  his 
companion  exclaimed. 

"Does  he— -phase?"  the  young  man  re- 
peated, with  odd  intensity. 

Mary  looked  at  him  an  instant ,-  she  was 
puzzled  by  the  deep  annoyance  that  had 


LORD    BEAUPRE  123 

flushed  through  the  essential  good-humor 
of  his  face.  Then  she  saw  that  this  annoy- 
ance had  exclusive  reference  to  poor  Char- 
lotte ;  so  that  it  left  her  free  to  reply,  with 
another  laugh  :  "  Well,  yes — he  does.  But 
you  know  I  like  it !" 

"  I  don't,  then  !"  Before  she  could  have 
asked  him,  even  had  she  wished  to,  in  what 
manner  such  a  circumstance  concerned  him, 
he  added,  with  his  droll  agitation :  "  I  never 
invited  her,  either  !  Don't  let  her  get  at 
me!" 

"  What  can  I  do  ?"  Mary  demanded,  as 
the  others  advanced. 

"  Please  take  her  away ,  keep  her  your- 
self !  I'll  take  the  American,  I'll  keep  him" 
he  murmured,  inconsequently,  as  a  bribe. 

"  But  I  don't  object  to  him." 

"  Do  you  like  him  so  much  ?" 

"Very  much  indeed,"  the  girl  replied. 

The  reply  was  perhaps  lost  upon  her  in- 
terlocutor, whose  eye  now  fixed  itself  gloom- 
ily on  the  dauntless  Charlotte.  As  Miss 
Firminger  came  nearer  he  exclaimed,  almost 
loud  enough  for  her  to  hear,  "  I  think  I 
shall  murder  her  some  day  !" 


124  LORD    BEAUPRE 

Mary  Gosselin's  first  impression  had 
been  that,  in  his  panic,  under  the  empire 
of  that  fixed  idea  to  which  he  confessed 
himself  subject,  he  attributed  to  his  kins- 
woman machinations  and  aggressions  of 
which  she  was  incapable ;  an  impression 
that  might  have  been  confirmed  by  this 
young  lady's  decorous  placidity,  her  pas- 
sionless eyes,  her  expressionless  cheeks,  and 
colorless  tones.  She  was  ugly,  yet  she 
was  orthodox ;  she  was  not  what  writers  of 
books  called  intense.  But  after  Mary,  to 
oblige  their  host,  had  tried,  successfully 
enough,  to  be  crafty,  had  drawn  her  on  to 
stroll  a  little  in  advance  of  the  two  gentle- 
men, she  became  promptly  aware,  by  the 
mystical  influence  of  propinquity,  that  Miss 
Firminger  was  indeed  full  of  views,  of  a 
purpose  single,  simple,  and  strong,  which 
gave  her  the  effect  of  a  person  carrying  with 
a  stiff,  steady  hand,  with  eyes  fixed  and  lips 
compressed,  a  cup  charged  to  the  brim. 
She  had  driven  over  to  lunch,  driven  from 
somewhere  in  the  neighborhood ;  she  had 
picked  up  some  weak  woman  as  an  escort. 
Mary,  though  she  knew  the  neighborhood, 


LORD    BEAUPRE 


125 


failed  to  recognize  her  base  of  operations  ; 
and  as  Charlotte  was  not  specific,  ended 
by  suspecting  that,  far  from  being  enter- 
tained by  friends,  she  had  put  up  at  an  inn 
and  hired  a  fly.  This  suspicion  startled  her; 
it  gave  her  for  the  first  time  something  of  the 
measure  of  the  passions  engaged,  and  she 
wondered  to  what  the  insecurity  complained 
of  by  Guy  might  lead.  Charlotte  on  arriv- 
ing had  gone  through  a  part  of  the  house  in 
quest  of  its  master  (the  servants  being  un- 
able to  tell  her  where  he  was),  and  she  had 
finally  come  upon  Mr.  Bolton- Brown,  who 
was  looking  at  old  books  in  the  library.  He 
had  placed  himself  at  her  service,  as  if  he 
had  been  trained  immediately  to  recognize 
in  such  a  case  his  duty,  and  informing  her 
that  he  believed  Lord  Beaupre  to  be  in 
the  grounds,  had  come  out  with  her  to  help 
to  find  him.  Lottie  Firminger  questioned 
her  companion  about  this  accommodating 
person ;  she  intimated  that  he  was  rather 
odd  but  rather  nice.  Mary  mentioned  to 
her  that  Lord  Beaupre  thought  highly  of 
him ;  she  believed  they  were  going  some- 
where together.  At  this  Miss  Firminger 


126  LORD    BEAUPRE 

turned  round  to  look  for  them,  but  they 
had  already  disappeared,  and  the  girl  be- 
came ominously  dumb. 

Mary  wondered  afterwards  what  profit 
she  could  hope  to  derive  from  such  pro- 
ceedings ;  they  struck  her  own  sense,  natu- 
rally, as  disreputable  and  desperate.  She 
was  equally  unable  to  discover  the  com- 
pensation they  offered,  in  another  variety, 
to  poor  Maud  Ashbury,  whom  Lord  Beau- 
pre,  the  greater  part  of  the  day,  neglected 
as  conscientiously  as  he  neglected  his 
cousin.  She  asked  herself  if  he  should  be 
blamed,  and  replied  that  the  others  should 
be  blamed  first.  He  got  rid  of  Charlotte 
somehow  after  tea  ;  she  had  to  fall  back 
to  her  mysterious  lines.  Mary  knew  this 
method  would  have  been  detestable  to  him 
— he  hated  to  force  his  friendly  nature  ;  she 
was  sorry  for  him  and  wished  to  lose  sight 
of  him.  She  wished  not  to  be  mixed  up, 
even  indirectly,  with  his  tribulations,  and 
the  fevered  faces  of  the  Ashburys  were 
particularly  dreadful  to  her.  She  spent  as 
much  of  the  long  summer  afternoon  as 
possible  out  of  the  house,  which,  indeed, 


LORD    BEAUPRE 


127 


on  such  an  occasion,  emptied  itself  of  most 
of  its  inmates.  Mary  Gosselin  asked  her 
brother  to  join  her  in  a  devious  ramble ; 
she  might  have  had  other  society,  but  she 
was  in  a  mood  to  prefer  his.  These  two 
were  "great  chums,"  and  they  had  been 
separated  so  long  that  they  had  arrears  of 
talk  to  make  up.  They  had  been  at  Bosco 
more  than  once,  and  though  Hugh  Gosselin 
said  that  the  land  of  the  free  (which  he  had 
assured  his  sister  was  even  more  enslaved 
than  dear  old  England)  made  one  forget 
there  were  such  spots  on  earth,  they  both 
remembered,  a  couple  of  miles  away,  a  little 
ancient  church  to  which  the  walk  across  the 
fields  would  be  the  right  thing.  They 
talked  of  other  things  as  they  went,  and 
among  them  they  talked  of  Mr.  Bolton- 
Brown,  in  regard  to  whom  Hugh,  as  scant- 
ily addicted  to  enthusiasm  as  to  bursts  of 
song  (he  was  determined  not  to  be  taken 
in),  became  in  commendation  almost  lyrical. 
Mary  asked  what  he  had  done  with  his 
paragon,  and  he  replied  that  he  believed 
him  to  have  gone  out  stealthily  to  sketch ; 
they  might  come  across  him.  He  was  ex- 


128  LORD    BEAUPRE 

traordinarily  clever  at  water  -  colors,  but 
haunted  with  the  fear  that  the  public  prac- 
tice of  such  an  art  on  Sunday  was  viewed 
with  disfavor  in  England.  Mary  exclaimed 
that  this  was  the  respectable  fact ;  and  when 
her  brother  ridiculed  the  idea,  she  told  him 
she  had  already  noticed  he  had  lost  all 
sense  of  things  at  home,  so  that  Mr.  Bolton- 
Brown  was  apparently  a  better  Englishman 
than  he.  "  He  is  indeed — he's  awfully  ar- 
tificial !"  Hugh  returned ;  but  it  must  be  add- 
ed that  in  spite  of  this  rigor  their  American 
friend,  when  they  reached  the  goal  of  their 
walk,  was  to  be  perceived  in  an  irregular 
attitude  in  the  very  church-yard.  He  was 
perched  on  an  old  flat  tomb,  with  a  box  of 
colors  beside  him  and  a  sketch  half  com- 
pleted. Hugh  asserted  that  this  exercise 
was  the  only  thing  that  Mr.  Bolton-Brown 
really  cared  for,  but  the  young  man  pro- 
tested against  the  imputation  in  the  face  of 
an  achievement  so  modest.  He  showed  his 
sketch  to  Mary,  however,  and  it  consoled 
her  for  not  having  kept  up  her  own  experi- 
ments ;  she  never  could  make  her  trees  so 
leafy.  He  had  found  a  lovely  bit  on  the 


LORD   BEAUPRE  129 

other  side  of  the  hill,  a  bit  he  should  like 
to  come  back  to,  and  he  offered  to  show  it 
to  his  friends.  They  were  on  the  point  of 
starting  with  him  to  look  at  it  when  Hugh 
Gosselin,  taking  out  his  watch,  remembered 
the  hour  at  which  he  had  promised  to  be  at 
the  house  again  to  give  his  mother,  who 
wanted  a  little  mild  exercise,  his  arm.  His 
sister  at  this  said  she  would  go  back  with 
him  ;  but  Bolton  -  Brown  interposed  an  ear- 
nest inquiry.  Mightn't  she  let  Hugh  keep 
his  appointment  and  let  him  take  her  over 
the  hill  and  bring  her  home  ? 

"  Happy  thought — do  that !"  said  Hugh, 
with  a  crudity  that  showed  the  girl  how  com- 
pletely he  had  lost  his  English  sense.  He 
perceived,  however,  in  an  instant,  that  she 
was  embarrassed,  whereupon  he  went  on  : 
"  My  dear  child,  I've  walked  with  girls  so 
often  in  America  that  we  really  ought  to  let 
poor  Brown  walk  with  one  in  England/'  I 
know  not  if  it  was  the  effect  of  this  plea 
or  that  of  some  further  eloquence  of  their 
friend;  at  any  rate,  Mary  Gosselin  in  the 
course  of  another  minute  had  accepted  the 
accident  of  Hugh's  secession,  had  seen  him 

9 


1 3o  LORD  BEAUPR£ 

depart  with  an  injunction  to  her  to  render  it 
clear  to  poor  Brown  that  he  had  made  quite 
a  monstrous  request.  As  she  went  over 
the  hill  with  her  companion  she  reflected 
that,  since  she  had  granted  the  request,  it 
was  not  in  her  interest  to  pretend  she  had 
gone  out  of  her  way.  She  wondered,  more- 
over, whether  her  brother  had  wished  to 
throw  them  together ;  it  suddenly  occurred 
to  her  that  the  whole  incident  might  have 
been  prearranged.  The  idea  made  her  a 
little  angry  with  Hugh;  it  led  her  however  to 
entertain  no  resentment  against  the  other 
party  (if  party  Mr.  Brown  had  been)  to  the 
transaction.  He  told  her  all  the  delight 
that  certain  sweet  old  corners  of  rural  Eng- 
land excited  in  his  mind,  and  she  liked 
him  for  hovering  near  some  of  her  own 
secrets. 

Hugh  Gosselin  meanwhile,  at  Bosco, 
strolling  on  the  terrace  with  his  mother,  who 
preferred  walks  that  were  as  slow  as  conspir- 
acies, and  had  had  much  to  say  to  him  about 
his  extraordinary  indiscretion,  repeated  over 
and  over  (it  ended  by  irritating  her),  that 
as  he  himself  had  been  out  for  hours  with 


LORD    BEAUPRE  I3I 

American  girls,  it  was  only  fair  to  let  their 
friend  have  a  turn  with  an  English  one. 

"  Pay  as  much  as  you  like,  but  don't  pay 
with  your  sister!"  Mrs.  Gosselin  replied; 
while  Hugh  submitted  that  it  was  just  his 
sister  who  was  required  to  make  the  pay- 
ment his.  She  turned  his  logic  to  easy 
scorn,  and  she  waited  on  the  terrace  till  she 
had  seen  the  two  explorers  reappear.  When 
the  ladies  went  to  dress  for  dinner  she  ex- 
pressed to  her  daughter  her  extreme  disap- 
proval of  such  conduct,  and  Mary  did  noth- 
ing more  to  justify  herself  than  to  exclaim 
at  first,  "  Poor  dear  man !"  and  then  to  say, 
"  I  was  afraid  you  wouldn't  like  it."  There 
were  reservations  in  her  silence  that  made 
Mrs.  Gosselin  uneasy,  and  she  was  glad 
that  at  dinner  Mr.  Bolton-Brown  had  to  take 
in  Mrs.  Ashbury ;  it  served  him  so  right. 
This  arrangement  had,  in  Mrs.  Gosselin's 
eyes,  the  added  merit  of  serving  Mrs.  Ash- 
bury  right.  She  was  more  uneasy  than 
ever  when,  after  dinner,  in  the  drawing-room, 
she  saw  Mary  sit  for  a  period  on  the  same 
small  sofa  with  the  culpable  American. 
This  young  couple  leaned  back  together 


132  LORD    BEAUPRE 

familiarly,  and  their  conversation  had  the 
air  of  being  desultory  without  being  in  the 
least  difficult.  At  last  she  quitted  her  place 
and  went  over  to  them,  remarking  to  Mr. 
Bolton-Brown  that  she  wanted  him  to  come 
and  talk  a  bit  to  her.  She  conducted  him 
to  another  part  of  the  room,  which  was  vast 
and  animated  by  scattered  groups,  and  held 
him  there  very  persuasively,  quite  mater- 
nally, till  the  approach  of  the  hour  at  which 
the  ladies  would  exchange  looks  and  mur- 
mur good-nights.  She  made  him  talk  about 
America,  though  he  wanted  to  talk  about 
England,  and  she  judged  that  she  gave  him 
an  impression  of  the  kindest  attention, 
though  she  was  really  thinking,  in  alterna- 
tion, of  three  important  things.  One  of 
these  was  a  circumstance  of  which  she  had 
become  conscious  only  just  after  sitting 
down  with  him  —  the  prolonged  absence  of 
Lord  Beaupre  from  the  drawing  -  room  ; 
the  second  was  the  absence,  equally  marked 
(to  her  imagination),  of  Maud  Ashbury  ,  the 
third  was  a  matter  different  altogether. 
"  England  gives  one  such  a  sense  of  im- 
memorial continuity,  something  that  drops 


LORD  BEAUPR£  i33 

like  a  plummet-line  into  the  past,"  said  the 
young  American,  ingeniously  exerting  him- 
self, while  Mrs.  Gosselin,  rigidly  contempora- 
neous, strayed  into  deserts  of  conjecture. 
Had  the  fact  that  their  host  was  out  of  the 
room  any  connection  with  the  fact  that  the 
most  beautiful,  even  though  the  most  su- 
icidal, of  his  satellities  had  quitted  it  ?  Yet 
if  poor  Guy  was  taking  a  turn  by  starlight 
on  the  terrace  with  the  misguided  girl,  what 
had  he  done  with  his  resentment  at  her  in- 
vasion, and  by  what  inspiration  of  despair 
had  Maud  achieved  such  a  triumph  ?  The 
good  lady  studied  Mrs.  Ashbury's  face 
across  the  room ;  she  decided  that  triumph, 
accompanied  perhaps  with  a  shade  of  nerv- 
ousness, looked  out  of  her  insincere  eyes. 
An  intelligent  consciousness  of  ridicule  was 
at  any  rate  less  present  in  them  than  ever. 
While  Mrs.  Gosselin  had  her  infallible  finger 
on  the  pulse  of  the  occasion,  one  of  the 
doors  opened  to  readmit  Lord  Beaupre,  who 
struck  her  as  pale,  and  who  immediately  ap- 
proached Mrs.  Ashbury  with  a  remark  ev- 
idently intended  for  herself  alone.  It  led 
this  lady  to  rise  with  a  movement  of  dismay 


I34  LORD   BEAUPR^ 

and,  after  a  question  or  two,  leave  the  room. 
Lord  Beaupre  left  it  again  in  her  company. 
Mr.  Bolton-Brown  had  also  noticed  the  in- 
cident ;  his  conversation  languished,  and  he 
asked  Mrs.  Gosselin  if  she  supposed  any- 
thing had  happened.  She  turned  it  over  a 
moment,  and  then  she  said :  "  Yes,  some- 
thing will  have  happened  to  Miss  Ash- 
bury." 

"  What  do  you  suppose  ?     Is  she  ill  ?" 

"  I  don't  know ;  we  shall  see.  They're 
capable  of  anything." 

"  Capable  of  anything?" 

"  I've  guessed  it — she  wants  to  have  a 
grievance." 

"A  grievance?"  Mr.  Bolton-Brown  was 
mystified. 

"  Of  course  you  don't  understand ;  how 
should  you?  Moreover,  it  doesn't  signify. 
But  I'm  so  vexed  with  them  (he's  a  very  old 
friend  of  ours)  that  really,  though  I  dare 
say  I'm  indiscreet,  I  can't  speak  civilly  of 
them." 

"  Miss  Ashbury's  a  wonderful  type,"  said 
the  young  American. 

This  remark  appeared  to  irritate  his  com- 


LORD    BEAUPRE  135 

panion.  "  I  see  perfectly  what  has  hap- 
pened ;  she  has  made  a  scene." 

"A  scene?"  Mr.  Bolton- Brown  was  ter- 
ribly out  of  it. 

"  She  has  tried  to  be  injured — to  provoke 
him,  I  mean,  to  some  act  of  impatience,  to 
some  failure  of  temper,  of  courtesy.  She 
has  asked  him  if  he  wishes  her  to  leave  the 
house  at  midnight,  and  he  may  have  an- 
swered—  But  no,  he  wouldn't !"  Mrs.  Gos- 
selin  suppressed  the  wild  supposition. 

"  How  you  read  it !     She  looks  so  quiet." 

"  Her  mother  has  coached  her,  and — I 
won't  pretend  to  say  exactly  what  has  hap- 
pened— they've  done,  somehow,  what  they 
wanted ;  they've  got  him  to  do  something 
to  them  that  he'll  have  to  make  up  for." 

"  What  "an  evolution  of  ingenuity  !"  the 
young  man  laughed. 

"  It  often  answers." 

"  Will  it  in  this  case  ?" 

Mrs.  Gosselin  was  silent  a  moment.  "  It 
may" 

"  Really,  you  think  ?" 

"  I  mean  it  might,  if  it  weren't  for  some- 
thing else." 


I36  LORD    BEAUPRE 

"  I'm  too  judicious  to  ask  what  that  is." 

"  I'll  tell  you  when  we're  back  in  town," 
said  Mrs.  Gosselin,  getting  up. 

Lord  Beaupre  was  restored  to  them,  and 
the  ladies  prepared  to  withdraw.  Before 
she  went  to  bed  Mrs.  Gosselin  asked  him 
if  there  had  been  anything  the  matter  with 
Maud ,  to  which  he  replied,  with  abysmal 
blankness  (she  had  never  seen  him  wear 
just  that  face),  that  he  was  afraid  Miss  Ash- 
bury  was  ill.  She  proved,  in  fact,  in  the 
morning  too  unwell  to  return  to  London  ;  a 
piece  of  news  communicated  to  Mrs.  Gosse- 
lin at  breakfast. 

"  She'll  have  to  stay ;  I  can't  turn  her  out 
of  the  house,"  said  Guy  Firminger. 

"  Very  well ;  let  her  stay  her  fill !" 

"  I  wish  you  would  stay,  too,"  the  young 
man  went  on. 

"  Do  you  mean  to  nurse  her  ?" 

"  No,  her  mother  must  do  that.  I  mean 
to  keep  me  company." 

"  You  ?    You're  not  going  up  ?" 

"  I  think  I  had  better  wait  over  to-day,  or 
long  enough  to  see  what's  the  matter." 

"  Don't  you  know  what's  the  matter  ?" 


LORD    BEAUPRE  137 

He  was  silent  a  moment.  "  I  may  have 
been  nasty  last  night." 

"  You  have  compunctions  ?  You're  too 
good-natured." 

"  I  dare  say  I  hit  rather  wild.  It  will 
look  better  for  me  to  stop  over  twenty-four 
hours." 

Mrs.  Gosselin  fixed  her  eyes  on  a  distant 
object.  "  Let  no  one  ever  say  you're 
selfish !" 

"  Does  any  one  ever  say  it  ?" 

"  You're  too  generous,  you're  too  soft, 
you're  too  foolish.  But  if  it  will  give  you 
any  pleasure,  Mary  and  I  will  wait  till  to- 
morrow." 

"And  Hugh,  too,  won't  he,  and  Bolton- 
Brown  ?" 

"  Hugh  will  do  as  he  pleases.  But  don't 
keep  the  American." 

"  Why  not  ?     He's  all  right." 

"  That's  why  I  want  him  to  go,"  said  Mrs. 
Gosselin,  who  could  treat  a  matter  with  can- 
dor, just  as  she  could  treat  it  with  humor, 
at  the  right  moment. 

The  party  at  Bosco  broke  up,  and  there 
was  a  general  retreat  to  town.  Hugh  Gos- 


138  LORD    BEAUPRE 

selin  pleaded  pressing  business,  he  accom- 
panied the  young  American  to  London. 
His  mother  and  sister  came  back  on  the 
morrow,  and  Bolton-Brown  went  in  to  see 
them,  as  he  often  did,  at  tea-time.  He 
found  Mrs.  Gosselin  alone  in  the  drawing- 
room,  and  she  took  such  a  convenient  oc- 
casion to  mention  to  him,  what  she  had 
withheld  on  the  eve  of  their  departure  from 
Bosco,  the  reason  why  poor  Maud  Ashbury's 
frantic  assault  on  the  master  of  that  property 
would  be  vain.  He  was  greatly  surprised, 
the  more  so  that  Hugh  hadn't  told  him. 
Mrs.  Gosselin  replied  that  Hugh  didn't 
know  :  she  had  not  seen  him  all  day,  and  it 
had  only  just  come  out.  Hugh's  friend,  at 
any  rate,  was  deeply  interested,  and  his  in- 
terest took  for  several  minutes  the  form  of 
throbbing  silence.  At  last  Mrs.  Gosselin 
heard  a  sound  below,  on  which  she  said, 
quickly:  "That's  Hugh— I'll  tell  him  now!" 
She  left  the  room  with  the  request  that  their 
visitor  would  wait  for  Mary,  who  would  be 
down  in  a  moment.  During  the  instants 
that  he  spent  alone  the  visitor  lurched,  as 
if  he  had  been  on  a  deck  in  a  blow,  to  the 


LORD  BEAUPRE  !39 

window,  and  stood  there  with  his  hands  in 
his  pockets,  staring  vacantly  into  Chester 
Street ;  then,  turning  away,  he  gave  himself, 
with  an  odd  ejaculation,  an  impatient  shake 
which  had  the  effect  of  enabling  him  to 
meet  Mary  Gosselin  composedly  enough 
when  she  came  in.  It  took  her  mother 
apparently  some  time  to  communicate  the 
news  to  Hugh,  so  that  Bolton-Brown  had  a 
considerable  margin  for  nervousness  and 
hesitation  before  he  could  say  to  the  girl, 
abruptly,  but  with  an  attempt  at  a  voice 
properly  gay :  "  You  must  let  me  very 
heartily  congratulate  you !" 

Mary  stared.     "On  what'?" 

"  On  your  engagement." 

"  My  engagement  ?" 

"  To  Lord  BeaupreV' 

Mary  Gosselin  looked  strange;  she  col- 
ored. "  Who  told  you  I'm  engaged  ?" 

"  Your  mother — just  now." 

"  Oh !"  the  girl  exclaimed,  turning  away. 
She  went  and  rang  the  bell  for  fresh  tea, 
rang  it  with  noticeable  force.  But  she  said 
"  Thank  you  very  much !"  before  the  servant 
came. 


IV 

BOLTON-BROWN  did  something  that  even- 
ing towards  disseminating  the  news ;  he 
told  it  to  the  first  people  he  met  social- 
ly after  leaving  Chester  Street;  and  this 
although  he  had  to  do  himself  a  certain 
violence  in  speaking.  He  would  have  pre- 
ferred to  hold  his  peace  ;  therefore  if  he  re- 
sisted his  inclination  it  was  for  an  urgent 
purpose.  This  purpose  was  to  prove  to 
himself  that  he  didn't  mind.  A  perfect  in- 
difference could  be  for  him  the  only  result 
of  any  understanding  Mary  Gosselin  might 
arrive  at  with  any  one,  and  he  wanted  to  be 
more  and  more  conscious  of  his  indifference. 
He  was  aware,  indeed,  that  it  required 
demonstration,  and  this  was  why  he  was  al- 
most feverishly  active.  He  could  mentally 
concede  at  least  that  he  had  been  surprised, 
for  he  had  suspected  nothing  at  Bosco. 
When  a  fellow  was  attentive  in  America 


LORD    BEAUPRE  I4I 

every  one  knew  it,  and  judged  by  this  stand- 
ard Lord  Beaupre  made  no  show;  how 
otherwise  should  he  have  achieved  that 
sweet  accompanied  ramble  ?  Everything,  at 
any  rate,  was  lucid  now,  except,  perhaps,  a 
certain  ambiguity  in  Hugh  Gosselin,  who, 
on  coming  into  the  drawing-room  with  his 
mother,  had  looked  flushed  and  grave,  and 
had  stayed  only  long  enough  to  kiss  Mary 
and  go  out  again.  There  had  been  nothing 
effusive  in  the  scene ;  but  then  there  was 
nothing  effusive  in  any  English  scene.  This 
helped  to  explain  why  Miss  Gosselin  had 
been  so  blank  during  the  minutes  she  spent 
with  him  before  her  mother  came  back. 

He  himself  wanted  to  cultivate  tranquillity, 
and  he  felt  that  he  did  so  the  next  day  in 
not  going  again  to  Chester  Street.  He 
went  instead  to  the  British  Museum,  where 
he  sat  quite  like  an  elderly  gentleman,  with 
his  hands  crossed  on  the  top  of  his  stick 
and  his  eyes  fixed  on  an  Assyrian  bull. 
When  he  came  away,  however,  it  was  with 
the  resolution  to  move  briskly;  so  that  he 
walked  westward  the  whole  length  of  Oxford 
Street  and  arrived  at  the  Marble  Arch.  He 


I42  LORD   BEAUPRE 

stared  for  some  minutes  at  this  monument, 
as  in  the  national  collection  he  had  stared 
at  even  less  intelligible  ones ;  then  brush- 
ing away  the  apprehension  that  he  should 
meet  two  persons  riding  together,  he  passed 
into  the  park.  He  didn't  care  a  straw 
whom  he  met  He  got  upon  the  grass 
and  made  his  way  to  the  southern  expanse, 
and  when  he  reached  the  Row  he  dropped 
into  a  chair,  rather  tired,  to  watch  the 
capering  procession  of  riders.  He  watched 
it  with  a  lustreless  eye,  for  what  he  seemed 
mainly  to  extract  from  it  was  a  vivification 
of  his  disappointment.  He  had  had  a  hope 
that  he  should  not  be  forced  to  leave  Lon- 
don without  inducing  Mary  Gosselin  to  ride 
with  him ;  but  that  prospect  failed,  for  what 
he  had  accomplished  in  the  British  Museum 
was  the  determination  to  go  to  Paris.  He 
tried  to  think  of  the  attractions  supposed 
to  be  evoked  by  that  name,  and  while  he 
was  so  engaged  he  recognized  that  a  gentle- 
man on  horseback,  close  to  the  barrier  of 
the  Row,  was  making  a  sign  to  him.  The 
gentleman  was  Lord  Beaupre,  who  had  pulled 
up  his  horse,  and  whose  sign  the  young 


LORD  BEAUPR£  143 

American  lost  no  time  in  obeying.  He 
went  forward  to  speak  to  his  late  host,  but 
during  the  instant  of  the  transit  he  was  able 
both  to  observe  that  Mary  Gosselin  was  not 
in  sight  and  to  ask  himself  why  she  was 
not.  She  rode  with  her  brother  ;  why  then 
didn't  she  ride  with  her  future  husband  ? 
It  was  singular  at  such  a  moment  to  see  her 
future  husband  disporting  himself  alone. 
This  personage  conversed  a  few  moments 
with  Bolton-Brown,  said  it  was  too  hot  to 
ride,  but  that  he  ought  to  be  mounted  (he 
would  give  him  a  mount,  if  he  liked),  and 
was  on  the  point  of  turning  away  when  his 
interlocutor  succumbed  to  the  temptation  to 
put  his  modesty  to  the  test. 

"Good-bye,  but  let  me  congratulate  you 
first,"  said  Bolton-Brown. 

"  Congratulate  me  ?  On  what  ?"  His  look, 
his  tone  were  very  much  what  Mary  Gosse- 
lin's  had  been. 

"  Why,  on  your  engagement.  Haven't 
you  heard  of  it  ?" 

Lord  Beaupre  stared  a  moment  while  his 
horse  shifted  uneasily.  Then  he  laughed 
and  said :  "  Which  of  them  do  you  mean  ?" 


I44  LORD    BEAUPRE 

"There's  only  one  I  know  anything  about. 
To  Miss  Gosselin,"  Brown  added,  after  a 
puzzled  pause. 

"Oh  yes,  I  see — thanks  so  much!"  With 
this,  letting  his  horse  go,  Lord  Beaupre 
broke  off,  while  Bolton-Brown  stood  look- 
ing after  him  and  saying  to  himself  that 
perhaps  he  didn't  know!  The  chapter  of 
English  oddities  was  long. 

But  on  the  morrow  the  announcement 
was  in  The  Morning  Post,  and  that  surely 
made  it  authentic.  It  was  doubtless  only 
superficially  singular  that  Guy  Firminger 
should  have  found  himself  unable  to  achieve 
a  call  in  Chester  Street  until  this  journal 
had  been  for  several  hours  in  circulation. 
He  appeared  there  just  before  luncheon,  and 
the  first  person  who  received  him  was  Mrs. 
Gosselin.  He  had  always  liked  her,  finding 
her  infallible  on  the  question  of  behavior; 
but  he  was  on  this  occasion  more  than  ever 
struck  with  her  ripe  astuteness,  her  inde- 
pendent wisdom. 

"  I  knew  what  you  wanted,  I  knew  what 
you  needed,  I  knew  the  subject  on  which 
you  had  pressed  her,"  the  good  lady  said; 


LORD    BEAUPRE  145 

"  and  after  Sunday  I  found  myself  really 
haunted  with  your  dangers.  There  was 
danger  in  the  air  at  Bosco,  in  your  own 
defended  house ;  it  seemed  to  me  too  mon- 
strous. I  said  to  myself,  'We  can  help  him, 
poor  dear,  and  we  must.  It's  the  least  one 
can  do  for  so  old  and  so  good  a  friend.'  I 
decided  what  to  do :  I  simply  put  this  other 
story  about.  In  London  that  always  an- 
swers. I  knew  that  Mary  pitied  you  really 
as  much  as  I  do,  and  that  what  she  saw  at 
Bosco  had  been  a  revelation — had  at  any 
rate  brought  your  situation  home  to  her. 
Yet,  of  course,  she  would  be  shy  about  say- 
ing out,  for  herself,  'Here  I  am— I'll  do 
what  you  want.'  The  thing  was  for  me  to 
say  it  for  her ;  so  I  said  it  first  to  that  chat- 
tering American.  He  repeated  it  to  several 
others,  and  there  you  are  !  I  just  forced 
her  hand  a  little,  but  it's  all  right.  All  she 
has  to  do  is  not  to  contradict  it.  It  won't 
be  any  trouble,  and  you'll  be  comfortable. 
That  will  be  our  reward !"  smiled  Mrs. 
Gosselin. 

"Yes,  all  she  has  to   do  is  not  to  con- 
tradict it,"  Lord  Beaupre  replied,  musing  a 


I46  LORD    BEAUPRE 

moment.  "  It  won't  be  any  trouble,"  he 
added,  "and  I  hope  I  shall  be  comfortable." 
He  thanked  Mrs.  Gosselin  formally  and 
liberally,  and  expressed  all  his  impatience 
to  assure  Mary  herself  of  his  deep  obliga- 
tion to  her ;  upon  which  his  hostess  prom- 
ised to  send  her  daughter  to  him  on  the 
instant :  she  would  go  and  call  her,  so  that 
they  might  be  alone.  Before  Mrs.  Gosselin 
left  him,  however,  she  touched  on  one  or 
two  points  that  had  their  little  importance. 
Guy  Firminger  had  asked  for  Hugh,  but 
Hugh  had  gone  to  the  City,  and  his  mother 
mentioned  candidly  that  he  didn't  take 
part  in  the  game.  She  even  disclosed  his 
reason  :  he  thought  there  was  a  want  of 
dignity  in  it.  Lord  Beaupre  stared  at  this, 
and  after  a  moment  exclaimed:  "Dignity? 
Dignity  be  hanged !  One  must  save  one's 
life!" 

"  Yes,  but  the  point  poor  Hugh  makes  is 
that  one  must  save  it  by  the  use  of  one's 
own  wits,  or  one's  own  arms  and  legs.  But 
do  you  know  what  I  said  to  him  ?"  Mrs. 
Gosselin  continued. 

"  Something  very  clever,  I  dare  say." 


LORD    BEAUPRtf  147 

"  That  if  we  were  drowning,  you'd  be  the 
very  first  to  jump  in.  And  we  may  fall 
overboard  yet !"  Fidgeting  there,  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets,  Lord  Beaupre  gave  a 
laugh  at  this,  but  assured  her  that  there 
was  nothing  in  the  world  for  which  they 
mightn't  count  upon  him.  None  the  less 
she  just  permitted  herself  another  warning, 
a  warning,  it  is  true,  that  was  in  his  own 
interest,  a  reminder  of  a  peril  that  he  ought 
beforehand  to  look  in  the  face.  Wasn't 
there  always  the  chance  —  just  the  bare 
chance  —  that  a  girl  in  Mary's  position 
would,  in  the  event,  decline  to  let  him  offj 
decline  to  release  him  even  on  the  day  he 
should  wish  to  marry  ?  She  wasn't  speak- 
ing of  Mary,  but  there  were,  of  course,  girls 
who  would  play  him  that  trick.  Guy  Fir- 
minger  considered  this  contingency ;  then  he 
declared  that  it  wasn't  a  question  of  "girls," 
it  was  simply  a  question  of  dear  old  Mary ! 
If  she  should  wish  to  hold  him,  so  much  the 
better ;  he  would  do  anything  in  the  world 
that  she  wanted.  "  Don't  let  us  dwell  on 
such  vulgarities ;  but  I  had  it  on  my  con- 
science!" Mrs.  Gosselin  wound  up. 


I48  LORD    BEAUPRlt 

She  left  him,  but  at  the  end  of  three 
minutes  Mary  came  in,  and  the  first  thing 
she  said  was  :  "  Before  you  speak  a  word, 
please  understand  this,  that  it's  wholly 
mamma's  doing.  I  hadn't  dreamed  of  it, 
but  she  suddenly  began  to  tell  people." 

"  It  was  charming  of  her,  and  it's  charm- 
ing of  you !"  the  visitor  cried. 

"  It's  not  charming  of  any  one,  I  think," 
said  Mary  Gosselin,  looking  at  the  carpet. 
"  It's  simply  idiotic." 

"  Don't  be  nasty  about  it.  It  will  be  tre- 
mendous fun." 

"  I've  only  consented  because  mamma 
says  we  owe  it  to  you,"  the  girl  went  on. 

"Never  mind  your  reason — the  end  justi- 
fies the  means.  I  can  never  thank  you 
enough,  nor  tell  you  what  a  weight  it  lifts 
off  my  shoulders.  Do  you  know  I  feel  the 
difference  already? — a  peace  that  passeth 
understanding  !"  Mary  replied  that  this 
was  childish ;  how  could  such  a  feeble 
fiction  last  ?  At  the  very  best  it  could  live 
but  an  hour,  and  then  he  would  be  no 
better  off  than  before.  It  would  bristle, 
moreover,  with  difficulties  and  absurdities; 


LORD    BEAUPRE  149 

it  would  be  so  much  more  trouble  than  it 
was  worth.  She  reminded  him  that  so 
ridiculous  a  service  had  never  been  asked 
of  any  girl,  and  at  this  he  seemed  a  little 
struck;  he  said  :  "Ah,  well,  if  it's  positively 
disagreeable  to  you,  we'll  instantly  drop  the 
idea.  But  I  —  I  thought  you  really  liked 
me  enough—  She  turned  away  impatient- 
ly, and  he  went  on  to  argue  imperturbably 
that  she  had  always  treated  him  in  the 
kindest  way  in  the  world.  He  added  that 
the  worst  was  over — the  start — they  were 
off ;  the  thing  would  be  in  all  the  evening 
papers.  Wasn't  it  much  simpler  to  accept 
it  ?  That  was  all  they  would  have  to  do ; 
and  all  she  would  have  to  do  would  be  not 
to  gainsay  it,  and  to  smile  and  thank  people 
when  she  was  congratulated.  She  would 
have  to  act  a  little,  but  that  would  just  be 
part  of  the  fun.  Oh,  he  hadn't  the  shadow 
of  a  scruple  about  taking  the  world  in ;  the 
world  deserved  it  richly,  and  she  couldn't 
deny  that  this  was  what  she  had  felt  for  him, 
that  she  had  really  been  moved  to  com- 
passion. He  grew  eloquent  and  charged 
her  with  having  recognized  in  his  predica- 


150  LORD    BEAUPRE 

ment  a  genuine  motive  for  charity.  Their 
little  plot  would  last  what  it  could  —  it 
would  be  a  part  of  their  amusement  to  make 
it  last.  Even  if  it  should  be  but  a  thing  of 
a  day,  there  would  have  been  always  so  much 
gained.  But  they  would  be  ingenious,  they 
would  find  ways,  they  would  have  no  end  of 
sport. 

"You  must  be  ingenious;  I  can't,"  said 
Mary.  "  If  people  scarcely  ever  see  us  to- 
gether, they'll  guess  we're  trying  to  humbug 
them." 

"  But  they  will  see  us  together.  We  are 
together.  We've  been  together  —  I  mean 
we've  seen  a  lot  of  each  other  —  all  our 
lives." 

"Ah,  not  Mfl/way!" 

"  Oh,  trust  me  to  work  it  right !"  cried 
the  young  man,  whose  imagination  had  now 
evidently  begun  to  glow  in  the  air  of  their 
pious  fraud. 

"You'll  find  it  a  dreadful  bore,"  said 
Mary  Gosselin. 

"Then  I'll  drop  it,  don't  you  see?  And 
yoti\\  drop  it,  of  course,  the  moment  you've 
had  enough,"  Lord  Beaupre  punctually 


LORD    BEAUPRE  15 j 

added.  "  But  as  soon  as  you  begin  to 
realize  what  a  lot  of  good  you  do  me  you 
won't  want  to  drop  it.  That  is,  if  you're 
what  I  take  you  for !"  laughed  his  lord- 
ship. 

If  a  third  person  had  been  present  at 
this  conversation  —  and  there  was  nothing 
in  it  surely  that  might  not  have  been  spoken 
before  a  trusty  listener— that  person  would 
perhaps  have  thought,  from  the  immediate 
expression  of  Mary  Gosselin's  face,  that 
she  was  on  the  point  of  exclaiming,  "  You 
take  me  for  too  big  a  fool !"  No  such  un- 
gracious words  in  fact,  however,  passed  her 
lips;  she  only  said,  after  an  instant,  "What 
reason  do  you  propose  to  give,  on  the  day 
you  need  one,  for  our  rupture  ?" 

Her  interlocutor  stared.  "  To  you,  do 
you  mean  ?" 

"7  sha'n't  ask  you  for  one.  I  mean  to 
other  people." 

"  Oh,  I'll  tell  them  you're  sick  of  me. 
I'll  put  everything  on  you,  and  you'll  put 
everything  on  me." 

"You  have  worked  it  out  1"  Mary  ex- 
claimed. 


152  LORD    BEAUPRE 

"  Oh,  I  shall  be  intensely  considerate." 

"  Do  you  call  that  being  considerate — 
publicly  accusing  me  ?" 

Guy  Firminger  stared  again.  "Why, 
isn't  that  the  reason  youll  give  ?" 

She  looked  at  him  an  instant.  "  I  won't 
tell  you  the  reason  I  shall  give." 

"  Oh,  I  shall  learn  it  from  others." 

"  I  hope  you'll  like  it  when  you  do  !"  said 
Mary,  with  sudden  gayety ;  and  she  added 
frankly  though  kindly,  the  hope  that  he 
might  soon  light  upon  some  young  person 
who  would  really  meet  his  requirements.  He 
replied  that  he  shouldn't  be  in  a  hurry — 
that  was  now  just  the  comfort ;  and  she,  as 
if  thinking  over  to  the  end  the  list  of  argu- 
ments against  his  clumsy  contrivance,  broke 
out,  "  And  of  course  you  mustn't  dream  of 
giving  me  anything  —  any  tokens  or  pres- 
ents." 

"  Then  it  won't  look  natural." 

"  That's  exactly  what  I  say.  You  can't 
make  it  deceive  anybody." 

"  I  must  give  you  something — something 
that  people  can  see.  There  must  be  some 
evidence  !  You  can  simply  put  my  offer- 


LORD    BEAUPRE  153 

ings  away  after  a  little  and  give  them  back." 
But  about  this  Mary  was  visibly  serious ; 
she  declared  that  she  wouldn't  touch  any- 
thing that  came  from  his  hand,  and  she 
spoke  in  such  a  tone  that  he  colored  a 
little  and  hastened  to  say,  "  Oh,  all  right, 
I  shall  be  thoroughly  careful !"  This  ap- 
peared to  complete  their  understanding;  so 
that  after  it  was  settled  that  for  the  deluded 
world  they  were  engaged,  there  was  obvi- 
ously nothing  for  him  to  do  but  to  go.  He 
therefore  shook  hands  with  her  very  grate- 
fully and  departed. 


HE  was  able  promptly  to  assure  his  ac- 
complice that  their  little  plot  was  working 
to  a  charm ;  it  already  made  such  a  differ- 
ence for  the  better.  Only  a  week  had 
elapsed,  but  he  felt  quite  another  man ;  his 
life  was  no  longer  spent  in  springing  to 
arms,  and  he  had  ceased  to  sleep  in  his 
boots.  The  ghost  of  his  great  fear  was  laid ; 
he  could  follow  out  his  inclinations  and  at- 


I54  LORD    BEAUPRJE 

tend  to  his  neglected  affairs.  The  news 
had  been  a  bomb  in  the  enemy's  camp,  and 
there  were  plenty  of  blank  faces  to  testify 
to  the  confusion  it  had  wrought.  Every 
one  was  "  sold,"  and  every  one  made  haste 
to  clap  him  on  the  back.  Lottie  Firminger 
only  had  written  in  terms  of  which  no  no- 
tice could  be  taken,  though,  of  course,  he 
expected  every  time  he  came  in  to  find  her 
waiting  in  his  hall.  Her  mother  was  com- 
ing up  to  town,  and  he  should  have  the  fam- 
ily on  his  back ;  but  taking  them  as  a  single 
body  he  could  manage  them,  and  that  was 
a  detail.  The  Ashburys  had  remained  at 
Bosco  till  that  establishment  wras  favored 
with  the  tidings  that  so  nearly  concerned  it 
(they  were  communicated  to  Maud's  mother 
by  the  house-keeper),  and  then  the  beautiful 
sufferer  had  found  in  her  defeat  strength  to 
seek  another  asylum.  The  two  ladies  had 
departed  for  a  destination  unknown ;  he 
didn't  think  they  had  turned  up  in  London. 
Guy  Firminger  averred  that  there  were  pre- 
cious portable  objects  which  he  was  sure  he 
should  miss  on  returning  to  his  country 
home. 


LORD    BEAUPRE  155 

He  came  every  day  to  Chester  Street,  and 
was  evidently  much  less  bored  than  Mary 
had  prefigured  by  this  regular  tribute  to 
verisimilitude.  It  was  amusement  enough 
to  see  the  progress  of  their  comedy  and  to 
invent  new  touches  for  some  of  its  scenes. 
The  girl  herself  was  amused;  it  was  an  op- 
portunity like  another  for  cleverness  such 
as  hers,  and  had  much  in  common  with  pri- 
vate theatricals,  especially  with  the  rehears- 
als, the  most  amusing  part.  Moreover,  she 
was  good-natured  enough  to  be  really  pleased 
at  the  service  it  was  impossible  for  her  not 
to  acknowledge  that  she  had  rendered.  Each 
of  the  parties  to  this  queer  contract  had  an- 
ecdotes and  suggestions  for  the  other,  and 
each  reminded  the  other  duly  that  they 
must  at  every  step  keep  their  story  straight. 
Except  for  the  exercise  of  this  care  Mary 
Gosselin  found  her  duties  less  onorous  than 
she  had  feared,  and  her  part  in  general  much 
more  passive  than  active.  It  consisted,  in- 
deed, largely  of  murmuring  thanks  and  smil- 
ing and  looking  happy  and  handsome  ;  as 
well  as,  perhaps,  also  in  saying,  in  answer  to 
many  questions,  that  nothing  as  yet  was 


156  LORD    BEAUPRE 

fixed,  and  of  trying  to  remain  humble  when 
people  expressed  without  ceremony  that 
such  a  match  was  a  wonder  for  such  a  girl. 
Her  mother,  on  the  other  hand,  was  devot- 
edly active.  She  treated  the  situation  with 
private  humor  but  with  public  zeal,  and, 
making  it  both  real  and  ideal,  told  so  many 
fibs  about  it  that  there  were  none  left  for 
Mary.  The  girl  had  failed  to  understand 
Mrs.  Gosselin's  interest  in  this  elaborate 
pleasantry ;  the  good  lady  had  seen  in  it 
from  the  first  more  than  she  herself  had 
been  able  to  see.  Mary  performed  her  task 
mechanically,  sceptically;  but  Mrs.  Gosselin 
attacked  hers  with  conviction,  and  had  re- 
ally the  air  at  moments  of  thinking  that 
their  fable  had  crystallized  into  fact.  Mary 
allowed  her  as  little  of  this  attitude  as  pos- 
sible, and  was  ironical  about  her  duplicity 
— warnings  which  the  elder  lady  received 
with  gayety,  until  one  day  when  repetition 
had  made  them  act  on  her  nerves.  Then 
she  begged  her  daughter,  with  sudden  as- 
perity, not  to  talk  to  her  as  if  she  were  a 
fool.  She  had  already  had  words  with 
Hugh  about  some  aspects  of  the  affair — so 


LORD  BEAUPR£  157 

much  as  this  was  evident  in  Chester  Street — 
a  smothered  discussion  which  at  the  mo- 
ment had  determined  the  poor  boy  to  go  to 
Paris  with  Bolton-Brown.  The  young  men 
came  back  together  after  Mary  had  been 
"  engaged  "  three  weeks,  but  she  remained 
in  ignorance  of  what  passed  between  Hugh 
and  his  mother  the  night  of  his  return.  She 
had  gone  to  the  opera  with  Lady  Whiteroy, 
after  one  of  her  invariable  comments  on 
Mrs.  Gosselin's  invariable  remark  that  of 
course  Guy  Firminger  would  spend  his 
evening  in  their  box.  The  remedy  for  his 
trouble,  Lord  Beaupre's  prospective  bride 
had  said,  was  surely  worse  than  the  disease  ; 
she  was  in  perfect  good  faith  when  she 
wondered  that  his  lordship's  sacrifices,  his 
laborious  cultivation  of  appearances  should 
"pay." 

Hugh  Gosselin  dined  with  his  mother, 
and  at  dinner  talked  of  Paris  and  of  what 
he  had  seen  and  done  there  ;  he  kept  the 
conversation  superficial,  and  after  he  had 
heard  how  his  sister,  at  the  moment,  was 
occupied,  asked  no  question  that  might  have 
seemed  to  denote  an  interest  in  the  success 


158  LORD    BEAUPRE 

of  the  experiment  for  which  in  going  abroad 
he  had  declined  responsibility.  His  moth- 
er could  not  help  observing  that  he  never 
mentioned  Guy  Firminger  by  either  of  his 
names,  and  it  struck  her  as  a  part  of  the 
same  detachment  that  later,  up-stairs  (she 
sat  with  him  while  he  smoked),  he  should 
suddenly  say,  as  he  finished  a  cigar : 
"  I  return  to  New  York  next  week." 
"Before  your  time?  What  for?"  Mrs. 
Gosselin  was  horrified. 

"  Oh,  mamma,  you  know  what  for  !" 
"  Because  you  still  resent  poor   Mary's 
good-nature  ?" 

"I  don't  understand  it,  and  I  don't  like 
things  I  don't  understand ;  therefore  I'd 
rather  not  be  here  to  see  it.  Besides,  I  re- 
ally can't  tell  a  pack  of  lies." 

Mrs.  Gosselin  exclaimed  and  protested ; 
she  had  arguments  to  prove  that  there  was 
no  call  at  present  for  the  least  deflection 
from  the  truth  ;  all  that  any  one  had  to  re- 
ply to  any  question  (and  there  could  be 
none  that  was  embarrassing  save  the  osten- 
sible determination  of  the  date  of  the  mar- 
riage) was  that  nothing  was  settled  as  yet — 


LORD    BEAUPRE  I5g 

a  form  of  words  in  which  for  the  life  of  her 
she  couldn't  see  any  perjury.  "  Why,  then, 
go  in  for  anything  in  such  bad  taste,  to 
culminate  only  in  something  so  absurd  ?" 
Hugh  demanded.  "  If  the  essential  part  of 
the  matter  can't  be  spoken  of  as  fixed  noth- 
ing is  fixed,  the  deception  becomes  trans- 
parent, and  they  give  the  whole  idea  away. 
It's  child's  play." 

"  That's  why  it's  so  innocent.  All  I  can 
tell  you  is  that  practically  their  attitude 
answers ;  he's  delighted  with  its  success. 
Those  dreadful  women  have  given  him  up ; 
they've  already  found  some  other  victim." 

"  And  how  is  it  all  to  end,  please  ?" 

Mrs.  Gosselin  was  silent  a  moment. 
"  Perhaps  it  won't  end." 

"  Do  you  mean  that  the  engagement  will 
become  real  ?" 

Again  the  good  lady  said  nothing  until 
she  broke  out :  "  My  dear  boy,  can't  you 
trust  your  poor  old  mummy  ?" 

"  Is  that  your  speculation  ?  Is  that  Ma- 
ry's ?  I  never  heard  of  anything  so  odi- 
ous !"  Hugh  Gosselin  cried.  But  she  de- 
fended his  sister  with  eagerness,  with  a 


160  LORD    BEAUPRE 

gloss  of  coaxing,  maternal  indignation,  de- 
claring that  Mary's  disinterestedness  was 
complete — she  had  the  perfect  proof  of  it. 
Hugh  was  conscious,  as  he  lighted  another 
cigar,  that  the  conversation  was  more  funda- 
mental than  any  that  he  had  ever  had  with 
his  mother,  who,  however,  hung  fire  but  for 
an  instant  when  he  asked  her  what  this 
"  perfect  proof  "  might  be.  He  didn't  doubt 
of  his  sister,  he  admitted  that ;  but  the  per- 
fect proof  would  make  the  whole  thing  more 
luminous.  It  took  finally  the  form  of  a 
confession  from  Mrs.  Gosselin  that  the  girl 
evidently  liked  —  well,  greatly  liked  —  Mr. 
Bolton-Brown.  Yes,  the  good  lady  had 
seen  for  herself  at  Bosco  that  the  smooth 
young  American  was  making  up  to  her,  and 
that,  time  and  opportunity  aiding,  some- 
thing might  very  well  happen  which  could 
not  be  regarded  as  satisfactory.  She  had 
been  very  frank  with  Mary,  had  besought 
her  not  to  commit  herself  to  a  suitor  who  in 
the  very  nature  of  the  case  couldn't  meet 
the  most  legitimate  of  their  views.  Mary, 
who  pretended  not  to  know  what  their 
"  views  "  were,  had  denied  that  she  was  in 


LORD    BEAUPRE  T6i 

danger ;  but  Mrs.  Gosselin  had  assured  her 
that  she  had  all  the  air  of  it,  and  had  said, 
triumphantly,  "Agree  to  what  Lord  Beau- 
pre  asks  of  you,  and  I'll  believe  you."  Mary 
had  wished  to  be  believed  —  so  she  had 
agreed.  That  was  all  the  witchcraft  any 
one  had  used. 

Mrs.  Gosselin  out  -  talked  her  son,  but 
there  were  two  or  three  plain  questions  that 
he  came  back  to  ;  and  the  first  of  these  bore 
upon  the  ground  of  her  aversion  to  poor 
Bolton-Brown.  He  told  her  again,  as  he 
had  told  her  before,  that  his  friend  was  that 
rare  bird,  a  maker  of  money  who  was  also 
a  man  of  culture.  He  was  a  gentleman  to 
his  finger-tips,  accomplished,  capable,  kind, 
with  a  charming  mother  and  two  lovely 
sisters  (she  should  see  them  !),  the  sort  of 
fellow,  in  short,  whom  it  was  stupid  not  to 
appreciate. 

"I  believe  it  all;  and  if  I  had  three 
daughters  he  should  be  very  welcome  to 
one  of  them." 

"  You  might  easily  have  had  three  daugh- 
ters who  wouldn't  attract  him  at  all !  You've 
had  the  good-fortune  to  have  one  who  does, 


162  LORD    BEAUPRE 

and  I  think  you  do  wrong  to  interfere  with 
it." 

"  My  eggs  are  in  one  basket  then,  and 
that's  a  reason  the  more  for  preferring  Lord 
Beaupre,"  said  Mrs.  Gosselin. 

"Then  it  is  your  calculation — "  stam- 
mered Hugh,  in  dismay ;  on  which  she  col- 
ored and  requested  that  he  would  be  a 
little  less  rough  with  his  mother.  She 
would  rather  part  with  him  immediately, 
sad  as  that  would  be,  than  that  he  should 
attempt  to  undo  what  she  had  done.  When 
Hugh  replied  that  it  was  not  to  Mary  but 
to  Beaupre  himself  that  he  judged  it  impor- 
tant he  should  speak,  she  informed  him  that 
a  rash  remonstrance  might  do  his  sister  a 
cruel  wrong.  Dear  Guy  was  most  attentive. 

"  If  you  mean  that  he  really  cares  for  her 
there's  the  less  excuse  for  his  taking  such  a 
liberty  with  her.  He's  either  in  love  with 
her  or  he  isn't.  If  he  is,  let  him  make  her 
a  serious  offer;  if  he  isn't,  let  him  leave 
her  alone.1' 

Mrs.  Gosselin  looked  at  her  son  with  a 
kind  of  patient  joy.  "  He's  in  love  with  her, 
but  he  doesn't  know  it." 


LORD  BEAUPR£  163 

"  He  ought  to  know  it ;  and  if  he's  so 
idiotic,  I  don't  see  that  we  ought  to  consider 
him." 

"  Don't  worry— he  shall  know  it !"  Mrs. 
Gosselin  cried  ;  and,  continuing  to  struggle 
with  Hugh,  she  insisted  on  the  delicacy  of 
the  situation.  She  made  a  certain  impres- 
sion on  him,  though  on  confused  grounds ; 
she  spoke  at  one  moment  as  if  he  was  to 
forbear  because  the  matter  was  a  make- 
believe  that  happened  to  contain  a  con- 
venience for  a  distressed  friend,  and  at 
another  as  if  one  ought  to  strain  a  point 
because  there  were  great  possibilities  at 
stake.  She  was  most  lucid  when  she 
pictured  the  social  position  and  other  ad- 
vantages of  a  peer  of  the  realm.  What  had 
those  of  an  American  stock-broker,  however 
amiable  and  with  whatever  shrill  belongings 
in  the  background,  to  compare  with  them  ? 
She  was  inconsistent,  but  she  was  diplo- 
matic, and  the  result  of  the  discussion  was 
that  Hugh  Gosselin  became  conscious  of  a 
dread  of  "  injuring"  his  sister.  He  became 
conscious  at  the  same  time  of  a  still  greater 
apprehension,  that  of  seeing  her  arrive  at 


1 64  LORD    BEAUPRE 

the  agreeable  in  a  tortuous,  a  second-rate 
manner.  He  might  keep  the  peace  to 
please  his  mother,  but  he  couldn't  enjoy  it, 
and  he  actually  took  his  departure,  travel- 
ling in  company  with  Bolton-Brown,  who,  of 
course,  before  going  waited  on  the  ladies  in 
Chester  Street  to  thank  them  for  the  kind- 
ness they  had  shown  him.  It  couldn't  be 
kept  from  Guy  Firminger  that  Hugh  was 
not  happy,  though  when  they  met,  which  was 
only  once  or  twice  before  he  quitted  Lon- 
don, Mary  Gosselin's  brother  flattered  him- 
self that  he  was  too  proud  to  show  it.  He 
had  always  liked  old  loafing  Guy,  and  it 
was  disagreeable  to  him  not  to  like  him 
now ;  but  he  was  aware  that  he  must  either 
quarrel  with  him  definitely  or  not  at  all,  and 
that  he  had  passed  his  word  to  his  mother. 
Therefore  his  attitude  was  strictly  negative ; 
he  took  with  the  parties  to  it  no  notice 
whatever  of  the  "  engagement,"  and  he 
couldn't  help  it  if  to  other  people  he  had 
the  air  of  not  being  initiated.  They  doubt- 
less thought  him  strangely  fastidious.  Per- 
haps he  was ;  the  tone  of  London  struck 
him  in  some  respects  as  very  horrid ;  he 


LORD  BEAUPR£  165 

had  grown  in  a  manner  away  from  it.  Mary 
was  impenetrable ;  tender,  gay,  charming, 
but  with  no  patience,  as  she  said,  for  his 
premature  flight.  Except  when  Lord  Beau- 
pre  was  present,  you  would  not  have 
dreamed  that  he  existed  for  her.  In  his 
company  —  he  had  to  be  present  more  or 
less  of  course — she  was  simply  like  any 
other  English  girl  who  disliked  effusiveness. 
They  had  each  the  same  manner,  that  of 
persons  of  rather  a  shy  tradition  who  were 
on  their  guard  against  public  "spooning." 
They  practised  their  fraud  with  good  taste, 
a  good  taste  mystifying  to  Bolton-Brown, 
who  thought  their  precautions  excessive. 
When  he  took  leave  of  Mary  Gosselin  her 
eyes  consented  for  a  moment  to  look  deep 
down  into  his.  He  had  been  from  the  first 
of  the  opinion  that  they  were  beautiful,  and 
he  was  more  mystified  than  ever. 

If  Guy  Firminger  had  failed  to  ask  Hugh 
Gosselin  whether  he  had  a  fault  to  find  with 
what  they  were  doing,  this  was,  in  spfte  of 
old  friendship,  simply  because  he  was  too 
happy  now  to  care  much  whom  he  didn't 
please,  to  care,  at  any  rate,  for  criticism.  He 


i66  LORD  BEAUPR£ 

had  ceased  to  be  critical  himself,  and  his 
high  prosperity  could  take  his  blameless- 
ness  for  granted.  His  happiness  would 
have  been  offensive  if  people  generally 
hadn't  liked  him,  for  it  consisted  of  a  kind 
of  monstrous  candid  comfort.  To  take  all 
sorts  of  things  for  granted  was  still  his 
great,  his  delightful  characteristic;  but  it 
didn't  prevent  his  showing  imagination  and 
tact  and  taste  in  particular  circumstances. 
He  made,  in  their  little  comedy,  all  the 
right  jokes  and  none  of  the  wrong  ones ; 
the  girl  had  an  acute  sense  that  there  were 
some  jokes  that  would  have  been  de- 
testable. She  gathered  that  it  was  univer- 
sally supposed  she  was  having  an  unprece- 
dented season,  and  something  of  the  glory 
of  an  enviable  future  seemed  indeed  to 
hang  about  her.  People  no  doubt  thought 
it  odd  that  she  didn't  go  about  more  with 
her  future  husband  ;  but  those  who  knew 
anything  about  her  knew  that  she  had  never 
done  exactly  as  other  girls  did.  She  had 
her  own  ways,  her  own  freedoms,  and  her 
own  scruples.  Certainly  he  made  the  Lon- 
don weeks  much  richer  than  they  had  ever 


LORD    BEAUPRE  :67 

been  for  a  subordinate  young  person ;  he 
put  more  things  into  them,  so  that  they  grew 
dense  and  complicated.  This  frightened  her 
at  moments,  especially  when  she  thought 
with  compunction  that  she  was  deceiving 
her  very  friends.  She  didn't  mind  taking 
the  vulgar  world  in,  but  there  were  people 
she  hated  not  to  enlighten,  to  reassure. 
She  could  undeceive  no  one  now,  and,  in- 
deed, she  would  have  been  ashamed.  There 
were  hours  when  she  wanted  to  stop  —  she 
had  such  a  dread  of  doing  too  much;  hours 
when  she  thought  with  dismay  that  the 
fiction  of  the  rupture  was  still  to  come,  with 
its  horrid  train  of  new  untrue  things.  She 
spoke  of  it  repeatedly  to  her  confederate, 
who  only  postponed  and  postponed,  told 
her  she  would  never  dream  of  forsaking 
him  if  she  measured  the  good  she  was 
doing  him.  She  did  measure  it,  however, 
when  she  met  him  in  the  great  world ;  she 
wras  of  course  always  meeting  him ;  that 
was  the  only  way  appearances  wrere  kept 
up.  There  was  a  certain  attitude  she  could 
allow  him  to  take  on  these  occasions ;  it 
covered  and  carried  off  their  subterfuge. 


168  LORD    BEAUPRE 

He  could  talk  to  her  unmolested ;  for  her- 
self she  never  spoke  of  anything  but  the 
charming  girls,  everywhere  present,  among 
whom  he  could  freely  choose.  He  didn't 
protest,  because  to  choose  freely  was  what 
he  wanted,  and  they  discussed  these  young 
ladies  one  by  one.  Some  she  recommend- 
ed, some  she  disparaged,  but  it  was  almost 
the  only  subject  she  tolerated.  It  was  her 
system,  in  short,  and  she  wondered  he 
didn't  get  tired  of  it ;  she  was  so  tired  of 
it  herself. 

She  tried  other  things  that  she  thought  he 
might  find  wearisome,  but  his  good-humor 
was  magnificent.  He  was  now  really  for 
the  first  time  enjoying  his  promotion,  his 
wealth,  his  insight  into  the  terms  on  which 
the  world  offered  itself  to  the  happy  few, 
and  these  terms  made  a  mixture  healing  to 
irritation.  Once,  at  some  glittering  ball,  he 
asked  her  if  she  should  be  jealous  if  he 
were  to  dance  again  with  Lady  Whiteroy, 
with  whom  he  had  danced  already,  and  this 
was  the  only  occasion  on  which  he  had 
come  near  making  a  joke  of  the  wrong  sort. 
She  showed  him  what  she  thought  of  it  and 


LORD    BEAUPRE  169 

made  him  feel  that  the  way  to  be  forgiven 
was  to  spend  the  rest  of  the  evening  with 
that  lovely  creature.  Now  that  the  phalanx 
of  the  pressingly  nubile  was  held  in  check 
there  was  accordingly  nothing  to  prevent  his 
passing  his  time  pleasantly.  Before  he  had 
taken  this  effective  way  the  diplomatic 
mother,  when  she  spied  him  flirting  with  a 
married  woman,  felt  that  in  urging  a  virgin 
daughter's  superior  claims  she  worked  for 
righteousness  as  well  as  for  the  poor  girl. 
But  Mary  Gosselin  protected  these  scandals 
practically  by  the  still  greater  scandal  of  her 
indifference;  so  that  he  was  in  the  odd 
position  of  having  waited  to  be  confined  to 
know  what  it  was  to  be  at  large.  He  had, 
in  other  words,  the  maximum  of  security 
with  the  minimum  of  privation.  The  lovely 
creatures  of  Lady  Whiteroy's  order  thought 
Mary  Gosselin  charming,  but  they  were  the 
first  to  see  through  her  falsity. 

All  this  carried  our  precious  pair  to  the 
middle  of  July;  but  nearly  a  month  before 
that,  one  night  under  the  summer  stars,  on 
the  deck  of  the  steamer  that  was  to  reach 
New  York  on  the  morrow,  something  had 


1 70  LORD    BEAUPRE 

passed  between  Hugh  Gosselin  and  his 
brooding  American  friend.  The  night  was 
warm  and  splendid;  these  were  their  last 
hours  at  sea,  and  Hugh,  who  had  been 
playing  whist  in  the  cabin,  came  up  very 
late  to  take  an  observation  before  turning 
in.  It  was  in  this  way  that  he  chanced  on 
his  companion,  who  was  leaning  over  the 
stern  of  the  ship  and  gazing  off,  beyond  its 
phosphorescent  track,  at  the  muffled,  moan- 
ing ocean,  the  backward  darkness,  every- 
thing he  had  relinquished.  Hugh  stood  by 
him  for  a  moment  and  then  asked  him 
what  he  was  thinking  about.  Bolton-Brown 
gave,  at  first  no  answer;  after  which  he 
turned  round  and,  with  his  back  against 
the  guard  of  the  deck,  looked  up  at  the 
multiplied  stars.  "  He  has  it  badly," 
Hugh  Gosselin  mentally  commented.  At 
last  his  friend  replied:  "About  something 
you  said  yesterday." 

"I  forget  what  I  said  yesterday." 
"You   spoke   of   your   sister's   intended 
marriage;    it   was  the   only  time  you  had 
spoken  of  it.     You  seemed  to  intimate  that 
it  might  not  after  all  take  place." 


LORD    BEAUPRE  171 

Hugh  hesitated  a  little.  "  Well,  it  wont 
take  place.  They're  not  engaged,  not 
really.  This  is  a  secret,  a  preposterous 
secret.  I  wouldn't  tell  any  one  else,  but 
I'm  willing  to  tell  you.  It  may  make  a 
difference  to  you." 

Bolton-Brown  turned  his  head ;  he  looked 
at  Hugh  a  minute  through  the  fresh  dark- 
ness. "  It  does  make  a  difference  to  me. 
But  I  don't  understand,"  he  added. 

"  Neither  do  I.  I  don't  like  it.  It's  a 
pretence,  a  temporary  make-believe,  to  help 
Beaupre  through." 

"Through  what?" 

"  He's  so  run  after." 

The  young  American  stared,  ejaculated, 
mused.  "  Oh,  yes— your  mother  told  me." 

"  It's  a  sort  of  invention  of  my  mother's 
and  a  notion  of  his  own  (very  absurd,  I 
think),  till  he  can  see  his  way.  Mary  serves 
as  a  kind  of  escort  for  these  first  exposed 
months.  It's  ridiculous,  but  I  don't  know 
that  it  hurts  her." 

"  Oh  !"  said  Bolton-Brown. 

"  I  don't  know  either  that  it  does  her  any 
good." 


172  LORD  BEAUPR£ 

"  No  !"  said  Bolton  -  Brown.  Then  he 
added:  "  It's  certainly  very  kind  of  her." 

"  It's  a  case  of  old  friends,"  Hugh  ex- 
plained, inadequately  as  he  felt.  "  He  has 
always  been  in  and  out  of  our  house." 

"  But  how  will  it  end  ?" 

"  I  haven't  the  least  idea." 

Bolton-Brown  was  silent  ;  he  faced  about 
to  the  stern  again  and  stared  at  the  rush 
of  the  ship.  Then  shifting  his  position 
once  more :  "  Won't  the  engagement,  be- 
fore they've  done,  develop  into  the  regular 
thing?" 

Hugh  felt  as  if  his  mother  were  listening. 
"  I  dare  say  not.  If  there  were  even  a  re- 
mote chance  of  that,  Mary  wouldn't  have 
consented." 

"  But  mayn't  he  easily  find  that— charming 
as  she  is — he's  in  love  with  her?" 

"  He's  too  much  taken  up  with  himself." 

"  That's  just  a  reason,"  said  Bolton- 
Brown.  "  Love  is  selfish."  He  considered 
a  moment  longer,  then  he  went  on  :  "  Arid 
mayn't  she  find — " 

"Find  what?"  said  Hugh,  as  he  hesi- 
tated. 


LORD    BEAUPRE  173 

"  Why,  that  she  likes  him." 

"  She  likes  him,  of  course,  else  she 
wouldn't  have  come  to  his  assistance.  But 
her  certainty  about  herself  must  have  been 
just  what  made  her  not  object  to  lending 
herself  to  the  arrangement.  She  could  do 
it  decently  because  she  doesn't  seriously 
care  for  him.  If  she  did—  Hugh  sud- 
denly stopped. 

"  If  she  did  ?"  his  friend  repeated. 

"  It  would  have  been  odious." 

"  I  see,"  said  Bolton-Brown,  gently.  "  But 
how  will  they  break  off  ?" 

"  It  will  be  Mary  who'll  break  off." 

"  Perhaps  she'll  find  it  difficult." 

"  She'll  require  a  pretext." 

"  I  see,"  mused  Bolton-Brown,  shifting  his 
position  again. 

"  She'll  find  one,"  Hugh  declared. 

"  I  hope  so,"  his  companion  responded. 

For  some  minutes  neither  of  them  spoke  ; 
then  Hugh  asked  :  "  Are  you  in  love  with 
her?" 

"Oh,  my  dear  fellow!"  Bolton-Brown 
wailed.  He  instantly  added,  "Will  it  be 
any  use  for  me  to  go  back  ?" 


I74  LORD    BEAUPRE 

Again  Hugh  felt  as  if  his  mother  were 
listening-,  but  he  answered,  "Do  go  back." 

"  It's  awfully  strange,"  said  Bolton-Brown. 
"  I'll  go  back." 

"  You  had  better  wait  a  couple  of  months, 
you  know." 

"  Mayn't  I  lose  her  then  ?" 

"  No  ;  they'll  drop  it  all." 

"I'll  go  back,"  the  American  repeated, 
as  if  he  hadn't  heard.  He  was  restless, 
agitated ;  he  had  evidently  been  much  af- 
fected. He  fidgeted  away  dimly,  moved  up 
the  level  length  of  the  deck.  Hugh  Gosse- 
lin  lingered  longer  at  the  stern  ;  he  fell  into 
the  attitude  in  which  he  had  found  the  oth- 
er, leaning  over  it  and  looking  back  at  the 
great  vague  distance  they  had  come.  He 
thought  of  his  mother. 


VI 


To  remind  her  fond  parent  of  the  vanity 
of  certain  expectations  which  she  more  than 
suspected  her  of  entertaining,  Mary  Gosse- 
lin,  while  she  felt  herself  intensely  watched 


LORD    BEAUPRE  175 

(it  had  all  brought  about  a  horrid  new  situ- 
ation at  home),  produced  every  day  some 
fresh  illustration  of  the  fact  that  people 
were  no  longer  imposed  upon.  Moreover, 
these  illustrations  were  not  invented  j  the 
girl  believed  in  them,  and  when  once  she 
had  begun  to  note  them  she  saw  them  mul- 
tiply fast.  Lady  Whiteroy,  for  one,  was  dis- 
tinctly suspicious  ;  she  had  taken  the  liberty 
more  than  once  of  asking  the  future  Lady 
Beaupre  what  in  the  world  was  the  matter 
with  her.  Brilliant  figure  as  she  was,  and 
occupied  with  her  own  pleasures,  which 
were  of  a  very  independent  nature,  she  had, 
nevertheless,  constituted  herself  Miss  Gos- 
selin's  social  sponsor :  she  took  a  particu- 
lar interest  in  her  marriage — an  interest  all 
the  greater  as  it  rested  not  only  on  a  freely- 
professed  regard  for  her,  but  on  a  keen  sym- 
pathy with  the  other  party  to  the  transac- 
tion. Lady  Whiteroy,  who  was  very  pretty 
and  very  clever,  and  whom  Mary  secretly  but 
profoundly  mistrusted,  delighted  in  them 
both,  in  short ;  so  much  so,  that  Mary 
judged  herself  happy  to  be  in  a  false  posi- 
tion, so  certain  should  she  have  been  to  be 


I76  LORD    BEAUPRE 

jealous  had  she  been  in  a  true  one.  This 
charming  woman  threw  out  inquiries  that 
made  the  girl  not  care  to  meet  her  eyes ; 
and  Mary  ended  by  forming  a  theory  of  the 
sort  of  marriage  for  Lord  Beaupre  that  Lady 
Whiteroy  really  would  have  appreciated.  It 
would  have  been  a  marriage  to  a  fool,  a 
marriage  to  Maud  Ashbury  or  to  Charlotte 
Firminger.  She  would  have  her  reasons  for 
preferring  that ;  and  as  regarded  the  actual 
prospect,  she  had  only  discovered  that  Mary 
was  even  more  astute  than  herself. 

It  will  be  understood  how  much  our 
young  lady  was  on  the  crest  of  the  wave, 
when  I  mention  that  in  spite  of  this  compli- 
cated consciousness  she  was  one  of  the  or- 
naments (Guy  Firminger  was  of  course  an- 
other) of  the  party  entertained  by  her  zealous 
friend  and  Lord  Whiteroy  during  the  Good- 
wood week.  She  came  back  to  town  with 
the  firm  intention  of  putting  an  end  to  a 
comedy  which  had  more  than  ever  become 
odious  to  her ;  in  consequence  of  which  she 
had  on  this  subject  with  her  fellow-comedian 
a  scene— the  scene  she  had  dreaded — half 
pathetic  half  ridiculous.  He  appealed  to 


LORD    BEAUPRE  177 

her,  wrestled  with  her,  took  his  usual  ground 
that  she  was  saving  his  life  without  really 
lifting  a  finger.  He  denied  that  the  public 
was  not  satisfied  with  their  pretexts  for 
postponement,  their  explanations  of  delay ; 
what  else  was  expected  of  a  man  who  would 
wish  to  celebrate  his  nuptials  on  a  suitable 
scale,  but  who  had  the  misfortune  to  have 
had,  one  after  another,  three  grievous  be- 
reavements ?  He  promised  not  to  molest 
her  for  the  next  three  months,  to  go  away 
till  his  "mourning"  was  over,  to  go  abroad, 
to  let  her  do  as  she  liked.  He  wouldn't 
come  near  her,  he  wouldn't  even  write  (no 
one  would  know  it),  if  she  would  let  him 
keep  up  the  mere  form  of  their  fiction  ;  and 
he  would  let  her  off  the  very  first  instant  he 
definitely  perceived  that  this  expedient  had 
ceased  to  be  effective.  She  couldn't  judge 
of  that — she  must  let  him  judge  ;  and  it  was 
a  matter  in  which  she  could  surely  trust  to 
his  honor. 

Mary  Gosselin  trusted  to  it,  but  she  in- 
sisted on  his  going  away.  When  he  took 
such  a  tone  as  that  she  couldn't  help  being 
moved ;  he  breathed  with  such  frank,  gen- 


178  LORD    BEAUPRE 

erous  lips  on  the  irritation  she  had  stored 
up  against  him.  Guy  Firminger  went  to 
Homburg ;  and  if  his  confederate  consent- 
ed not  to  clip  the  slender  thread  by  which 
this  particular  engagement  still  hung,  she 
made  very  short  work  with  every  other.  A 
dozen  invitations,  for  Cowes,  for  the  coun- 
try, for  Scotland,  shimmered  there  before 
her,  made  a  pathway  of  flowers,  but  she 
sent  barbarous  excuses.  When  her  mother, 
aghast,  said  to  her,  "  What,  then,  will  you 
do  ?"  she  replied,  in  a  very  conclusive  man- 
ner, "  I'll  go  home !"  Mrs.  Gosselin  was 
wise  enough  not  to  struggle ;  she  saw  that 
the  thread  was  delicate,  that  it  must  dangle 
in  quiet  air.  She  therefore  travelled  back 
with  her  daughter  to  homely  Hampshire, 
feeling  that  they  were  people  of  less  im- 
portance than  they  had  been  for  many  a 
week.  On  the  August  afternoons  they  sat 
again  on  the  little  lawn  on  which  Guy  Fir- 
minger had  found  them  the  day  he  first  be- 
came eloquent  about  the  perils  of  the  de- 
sirable young  bachelor ;  and  it  was  on  this 
very  spot  that,  towards  the  end  of  the  month, 
and  with  some  surprise,  they  beheld  Mr. 


LORD    BEAUPRE  !79 

Bolton  -  Brown  once  more  approach.  He 
had  come  back  from  America ;  he  had  ar- 
rived but  a  few  days  before  ;  he  was  stay- 
ing, of  all  places  in  the  world,  at  the  inn  in 
the  village. 

His  explanation  of  this  caprice  was  of  all 
explanations  the  oddest :  he  had  come  three 
thousand  miles  for  the  love  of  water-colors. 
There  was  nothing  more  sketchable  than 
the  sketchability  of  Hampshire — wasn't  it 
celebrated,  classic  ?  and  he  was  so  good  as 
to  include  Mrs.  Gosselin's  charming  prem- 
ises, and  even  their  charming  occupants,  in 
his  view  of  the  field.  He  fell  to  work  with 
speed,  with  a  sort  of  feverish  eagerness  ;  he 
seemed  possessed,  indeed,  by  the  frenzy  of 
the  brush.  He  sketched  everything  on  the 
place,  and  when  he  had  represented  an  ob- 
ject once  he  went  straight  at  it  again.  His 
advent  was  soothing  to  Mary  Gosselin,  in 
spite  of  his  nervous  activity ;  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, indeed,  that  at  the  moment  he  ar- 
rived she  had  already  felt  herself  in  quieter 
waters.  The  August  afternoons,  the  relin- 
quishment  of  London,  the  simplified  life, 
had  rendered  her  a  service  which,  if  she  had 


l8o  LORD    BEAUPRE 

freely  qualified  it,  she  would  have  described 
as  a  restoration  of  her  self-respect.  If  poor 
Guy  found  any  profit  in  such  conditions  as 
these,  there  was  no  great  reason  to  repudi- 
ate him.  She  had  so  completely  shaken 
off  responsibility  that  she  took  scarcely 
more  than  a  languid  interest  in  the  fact, 
communicated  to  her  by  Lady  Whiteroy, 
that  Charlotte  Firminger  had  also,  as  the 
newspapers  said,  "proceeded"  to  Homburg. 
Lady  Whiteroy  knew,  for  Lady  Whiteroy  had 
"proceeded  "  as  well ;  her  physician  had  dis- 
covered in  her  constitution  a  pressing  need 
for  the  comfort  imbibed  in  dripping  matuti- 
nal tumblers.  She  chronicled  Charlotte's 
presence,  and  even  to  some  extent  her  be- 
havior, among  the  haunters  of  the  spring, 
but  it  was  not  till  some  time  afterwards  that 
Mary  learned  how  Miss  Firminger's  pilgrim- 
age had  been  made  under  her  ladyship's 
protection.  This  was  a  further  sign  that,  like 
Mrs.  Gosselin,  Lady  Whiteroy  had  ceased  to 
struggle ;  she  had,  in  town,  only  shrugged 
her  shoulders  ambiguously  on  being  inform- 
ed that  Lord  Beauprd's  intended  was  going 
down  to  her  stupid  home. 


LORD    BEAUPRE  181 

The  fulness  of  Mrs.  Gosselin's  renuncia- 
tion was  apparent  during  the  stay  of  the 
young  American  in  the  neighborhood  of 
that  retreat.  She  occupied  herself  with  her 
knitting,  her  garden,  and  the  cares  of  a  punc- 
tilious hospitality,  but  she  had  no  appear- 
ance of  any  other  occupation.  When  peo- 
ple came  to  tea  Bolton- Brown  was  always 
there,  and  she  had  the  self-control  to  attempt 
to  say  nothing  that  could  assuage  their  nat- 
ural surprise.  Mrs.  Ashbury  came  one  day 
with  poor  Maud,  and  the  two  elder  ladies, 
as  they  had  done  more  than  once  before, 
looked  for  some  moments  into  each  other's 
eyes.  This  time  it  was  not  a  look  of  defi- 
ance ;  it  was  rather — or  it  would  have  been 
for  an  observer  completely  in  the  secret— a 
look  of  reciprocity,  of  fraternity,  a  look  of 
arrangement.  There  was,  however,  no  one 
completely  in  the  secret  save  perhaps  Mary, 
and  Mary  didn't  heed.  The  arrangement, 
at  any  rate,  was  ineffectual ;  Mrs.  Gosselin 
might  mutely  say,  over  the  young  Ameri- 
can's eager,  talkative  shoulders,  "  Yes,  you 
may  have  him  if  you  can  get  him :"  the 
most  rudimentary  experiments  demonstrat- 


182  LORD    BEAUPRE 

ed  that  he  was  not  to  be  got.  Nothing 
passed  on  this  subject  between  Mary  and 
her  mother,  whom  the  girl  none  the  less 
knew  to  be  holding  her  breath  and  continu- 
ing to  watch.  She  counted  it  more  and 
more  as  one  unpleasant  result  of  her  con- 
spiracy with  Guy  Firminger,  that  it  almost 
poisoned  a  relation  that  had  always  been 
sweet.  It  was  to  show  that  she  was  inde- 
pendent of  it  that  she  did  as  she  liked  now, 
which  was  almost  always  as  Bolton-Brown 
liked.  When  in  the  first  days  of  Septem- 
ber— it  was  in  the  warm,  clear  twilight,  and 
they  happened,  amid  the  scent  of  fresh  hay, 
to  be  leaning  side  by  side  on  a  stile — he 
gave  her  a  view  of  the  fundamental  and 
esoteric,  as  distinguished  from  the  conven- 
ient and  superficial  motive  of  his  having 
come  back  to  England,  she  of  course  made 
no  allusion  to  a  prior  tie.  On  the  other 
hand,  she  insisted  on  his  going  up  to  Lon- 
don by  the  first  train  the  next  day.  He  was 
to  wait — that  was  distinctly  understood — 
for  his  satisfaction. 

She  desired,  meanwhile,  to  write  immedi- 
ately to  Guy  Firminger,  but  as  he  had  kept 


LORD    BEAUPRE  183 

his  promise  of  not  complicating  their  con- 
tract with  letters  she  was  uncertain  as  to  his 
actual  whereabouts ;  she  was  only  sure  he 
would  have  left  Homburg.  Lady  White- 
roy  had  become  silent,  so  there  were  no 
more  side-lights,  and  she  was  on  the  point 
of  telegraphing  to  London  for  an  address 
when  she  received  a  telegram  from  Bosco. 
The  proprietor  of  that  seat  had  arrived  there 
the  day  before,  and  he  found  he  could  make 
trains  fit  if  she  would  on  the  morrow  al- 
low him  to  come  over  and  see  her  for  a 
day  or  two.  He  had  returned  sooner  than 
their  agreement  allowed,  but  she  answered, 
"Come,"  and  she  showed  his  missive  to 
her  mother,  who  at  the  sight  of  it  wept 
with  strange  passion.  Mary  said  to  her, 
"  For  Heaven's  sake,  don't  let  him  see 
you  !"  She  lost  no  time  :  she  told  him  on 
the  morrow,  as  soon  as  he  entered  the 
house,  that  she  couldn't  keep  it  up  another 
hour. 

"All  right — it  is  no  use,"  he  conceded  ; 
"they're  at  it  again  !" 

"  You  see  you've  gained  nothing,"  she  re- 
plied, triumphantly.  She  had  instantly  rec- 


1 84  LORD    BEAUPRE 

ognized  that  he  was  different,  how  much 
had  happened. 

"I've  gained  some  of  the  happiest  days 
of  my  life." 

"  Oh,  that  was  not  what  you  tried  for  !" 

"  Indeed  it  was,  and  I  got  exactly  what  I 
wanted,"  said  Guy  Firminger.  They  were 
in  the  cool  little  drawing-room  where  the 
morning  light  was  dim.  Guy  Firminger  had 
a  sunburnt  appearance,  as  in  England  peo- 
ple returning  from  other  countries  are  apt 
to  have,  and  Mary  thought  he  had  never 
looked  so  well.  It  was  odd,  but  it  was 
noticeable,  that  he  had  grown  much  hand- 
somer since  he  had  become  a  personage. 
He  paused  a  moment,  smiling  at  her  while 
her  mysterious  eyes  rested  on  him,  and  then 
he  added :  "  Nothing  ever  worked  better. 
It's  no  use  now — people  see.  But  I've  got 
a  start.  I  wanted  to  turn  round  and  look 
about,  and  I  have  turned  round  and  looked 
about.  There  are  things  I've  escaped.  I'm 
afraid  you'll  never  understand  how  deeply 
I'm  indebted  to  you." 

"  Oh,  it's  all  right,"  said  Mary  Gosselin. 

There   was    another   short   silence,  after 


LORD    BEAUPRE  185 

which  he  went  on  :  "  I've  come  back  sooner 
than  I  promised,  but  only  to  be  strictly  fair. 
I  began  to  see  that  we  couldn't  hold  out, 
and  that  it  was  my  duty  to  let  you  off. 
From  that  moment  I  was  bound  to  put  an 
end  to  your  situation.  I  might  have  done 
so  by  letter,  but  that  seemed  scarcely  de- 
cent. It's  all  I  came  back  for,  you  know, 
and  it's  why  I  wired  to  you  yesterday." 

Mary  hesitated  an  instant ;  she  reflected 
intensely.  What  had  happened,  what  would 
happen,  was  that  if  she  didn't  take  care  the 
signal  for  the  end  of  their  little  arrangement 
would  not  have  appeared  to  come  from  her- 
self. She  particularly  wished  it  not  to 
come  from  any  one  else,  she  had  even  a  hor- 
ror of  that ;  so  that  after  an  instant  she 
hastened  to  say,  "I  was  on  the  very  point 
of  wiring  to  you — I  was  only  waiting  for 
your  address." 

"Wiring  to  me?"  He  seemed  rather 
blank. 

"  To  tell  you  that  our  absurd  affair  really, 
this  time,  can't  go  on  another  day — to  put 
a  complete  stop  to  it." 

"  Oh  !"  said  Guy  Firminger. 


1 86  LORD    BEAUPRE 

"  So  it's  all  right." 

"  You've  always  hated  it !"  Guy  laughed ; 
and  his  laugh  sounded  slightly  foolish  to 
the  girl. 

"  I  found  yesterday  that  I  hated  it  more 
than  ever." 

Lord  Beaupre  showed  a  quickened  atten- 
tion. "  For  what  reason — yesterday?" 

"  I  would  rather  not  tell  you,  please.  Per- 
haps some  time  you'll  find  it  out." 

He  continued  to  look  at  her  brightly  and 
fixedly,  with  his  confused  cheerfulness. 
Then  he  said,  with  a  vague,  courteous  alac- 
rity, "  I  see,  I  see !"  She  had  an  impres- 
sion that  he  didn't  see  ;  but  it  didn't  matter, 
she  was  nervous  and  quite  preferred  that  he 
shouldn't.  They  both  got  up,  and  in  a  mo- 
ment he  exclaimed  :  "  Well,  I'm  intensely 
sorry  it's  over  !  It  has  been  so  charming." 
"  YouVe  been  very  good  about  it ;  I  mean 
very  reasonable,"  Mary  said,  to  say  some- 
thing. Then  she  felt  in  her  nervousness 
that  this  was  just  what  she  ought  not  to 
have  said ;  it  sounded  ironical  and  provok- 
ing, whereas  she  had  meant  it  as  pure  good- 
nature. "  Of  course  you'll  stay  to  lunch- 


LORD    I3EAUPRE  187 

eon  ?"  she  continued.  She  was  bound  in 
common  hospitality  to  speak  of  that,  and  he 
answered  that  it  would  give  him  the  great- 
est pleasure.  After  this  her  apprehension 
increased,  and  it  was  confirmed  in  particu- 
lar by  the  manner  in  which  he  suddenly 
asked : 

"  By-the-way,  what  reason  shall  we  give  ?" 

"  What  reason  ?" 

"  For  our  rupture.  Don't  let  us  seem  to 
have  quarrelled." 

"  We  can't  help  that,"  said  Mary.  "  Noth- 
ing else  will  account  for  our  behavior." 

"  Well,  I  sha'n't  say  anything  about  you." 

"  Do  you  mean  you'll  let  people  think  it 
was  yourself  who  were  tired  of  it  ?" 

"  I  mean  I  sha'n't  blame  you." 

"  You  ought  to  behave  as  if  you  cared  !" 
said  Mary. 

Guy  Firminger  laughed,  but  he  looked 
worried,  and  he  evidently  was  puzzled. 
"You  must  act  as  if  you  had  jilted  me." 

"You're  not  the  sort  of  person,  unfortu- 
nately, that  people  jilt." 

Lord  Beaupre  appeared  to  accept  this 
statement  as  incontestable  ;  not  with  ela- 


188  LORD    BEAUPRE 

tion,  however,  but  with  candid  regret,  the 
slightly  embarrassed  recognition  of  a  funda- 
mental obstacle.  "  Well,  it's  no  one's  busi- 
ness, at  any  rate,  is  it  ?" 

"  No  one's,  and  that's  what  I  shall  say  if 
people  question  me.  Besides,"  Mary  added, 
"  they1!!  see  for  themselves." 

"  What  will  they  see  ?" 

"  I  mean  they'll  understand.  And  now 
we  had  better  join  mamma." 

It  was  his  evident  inclination  to  linger  in 
the  room  after  he  had  said  this  that  gave 
her  complete  alarm.  Mrs.  Gosselin  was  in 
another  room,  in  which  she  sat  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  Mary  moved  in  that  direction, 
pausing  only  in  the  hall  for  him  to  accom- 
pany her.  She  wished  to  get  him  into  the 
presence  of  a  third  person.  In  the  hall  he 
joined  her,  and  in  doing  so  laid  his  hand 
gently  on  her  arm.  Then  looking  into  her 
eyes  with  all  the  pleasantness  of  his  hon- 
esty, he  said  :  "  It  will  be  very  easy  for  me 
to  appear  to  care — for  I  shall  care.  I  shall 
care  immensely !"  Lord  Beaupre  added, 
smiling. 

Anything,  it  struck  her,  wasbetter  than  that 


LORD    BEAUPRE  189 

—than  that  he  should  say :  "  We'll  keep  on, 
if  you  like,  (/should  !)  only  this  time  it  will 
be  serious.  Hold  me  to  it — do;  don't  let 
me  go ;  lead  me  on  to  the  altar,  really !" 
Some  such  words  as  these,  she  believed, 
were  rising  to  his  lips,  and  she  had  an  in- 
surmountable horror  of  hearing  them.  It 
was  as  if,  well  enough  meant  on  his  part, 
they  would  do  her  a  sort  of  dishonor,  so 
that  all  her  impulse  was  quickly  to  avert 
them.  That  was  not  the  way  she  wanted 
to  be  asked  in  marriage.  "  Thank  you  very 
much,"  she  said,  "  but  it  doesn't  in  the  least 
matter.  You  will  seem  to  have  been  jilted 
—so  it's  all  right !" 

"  All  right !  You  mean—  He  hesi- 
tated, he  had  colored  a  little ;  his  eyes 
questioned  her. 

"  I'm  engaged  to  be  married — in  earnest." 

"  Oh  !"  said  Lord  Beaupre. 

"You  askeH  me  just  now  if  I  had  a  spe- 
cial reason  for  having  been  on  the  point  of 
telegraphing  to  you,  and  I  said  I  had.  That 
was  my  special  reason." 

"  I  see  !"  said  Lord  Beaupre.  He  looked 
grave  for  a  few  seconds,  then  he  gave  an 


i9o  LORD  BEAUPR£ 

awkward  smile.  But  he  behaved  with  per- 
fect tact  and  discretion,  didn't  even  ask  her 
who  the  gentleman  in  the  case  might  be. 
He  congratulated  her  in  the  dark,  as  it 
were,  and  if  the  effect  of  this  was  indeed  a 
little  odd,  she  liked  him  for  his  quick  per- 
ception of  the  fine  fitness  of  pulling  up 
short.  Besides,  he  extracted  the  name  of 
the  gentleman  soon  enough  from  her  moth- 
er, in  whose  company  they  now  immediately 
found  themselves.  Mary  left  Guy  Firmin- 
ger  with  the  good  lady  for  half  an  hour 
before  luncheon  ;  and  when  the  girl  came 
back  it  was  to  observe  that  she  had  been 
crying  again.  It  was  dreadful  —  what  she 
might  have  been  saying.  Their  guest,  how- 
ever, at  luncheon  was  not  lachrymose  ;  he 
was  natural,  but  he  was  talkative  and  gay. 
Mary  liked  the  way  he  now  behaved,  and 
more  particularly  the  way  he  departed  im- 
mediately after  the  meal.  As  soon  as  he 
was  gone  Mrs.  Gosselin  broke  out,  suppli- 
antly:  "  Mary  !"  But  her  daughter  replied  : 
"  I  know,  mamma,  perfectly  what  you're 
going  to  say,  and  if  you  attempt  to  say  it  I 
shall  leave  the  room."  With  this  threat 


LORD    BEAUPRE  igl 

(day  after  day,  for  the  following  time)  she 
kept  the  terrible  appeal  unuttered  until  it 
was  too  late  for  an  appeal  to  be  of  use. 
That  afternoon  she  wrote  to  Bolton-Brown 
that  she  accepted  his  offer  of  marriage. 

Guy  Firminger  departed  altogether;  he 
went  abroad  again,  and  to  far  countries.  He 
was  therefore  not  able  to  be  present  at  the 
nuptials  of  Miss  Gosselin  and  the  young 
American  whom  he  had  entertained  at  Bosco, 
which  took  place  in  the  middle  of  November. 
Had  he  been  in  England,  however,  he  prob- 
ably would  have  felt  impelled  by  a  due  re- 
gard for  past  verisimilitude  to  abstain  from 
giving  his  countenance  to  such  an  occasion. 
His  absence  from  the  country  contributed 
to  the  needed,  even  if  astonishing,  effect  of 
his  having  been  jilted  ;  so,  likewise,  did  the 
reputed  vastness  of  Bolton- Brown's  young 
income,  which  in  London  was  grossly  exag- 
gerated. Hugh  Gosselin  had  perhaps  a  lit- 
tle to  do  with  this  ;  as  he  had  sacrificed  a 
part  of  his  summer  holiday,  he  got  another 
month  and  came  out  to  his  sister's  wedding. 
He  took  public  comfort  in  his  brother-in- 
law  ;  nevertheless  he  listened  with  attention 


192  LORD    BEAUPRE 

to  a  curious  communication  made  him  by 
his  mother  after  the  young  couple  had  start- 
ed for  Italy ;  even  to  the  point  of  bringing 
out  the  inquiry  (in  answer  to  her  assertion 
that  poor  Guy  had  been  ready  to  place 
everything  he  had  at  Mary's  feet)  :  "  Then 
why  the  devil  didn't  he  do  it  ?" 

"  From  simple  delicacy  !  He  didn't  want 
to  make  her  feel  as  if  she  had  lent  herself 
to  an  artifice  only  on  purpose  to  get  hold  of 
him — to  treat  her  as  if  she,  too,  had  been  at 
bottom  one  of  the  very  harpies  she  helped 
him  to  elude." 

Hugh  thought  a  moment.  "  That  was 
delicate." 

"  He's  the  dearest  creature  in  the  world. 
He's  on  his  guard,  he's  prudent,  he  tested 
himself  by  separation.  Then  he  came  back 
to  England  in  love  with  her.  She  might 
have  had  it  all  P 

"  I'm  glad  she  didn't  get  it  that  way." 

"  She  had  only  to  wait — to  put  an  end  to 
their  artifice,  harmless  as  it  was,  for  the 
present,  but  still  wait.  She  might  have 
broken  off  in  a  way  that  would  have  made 
it  come  on  again  better." 


LORD    BEAUPRE  I93 

"  That's  exactly  what  she  didn't  want." 

"  I  mean  as  a  quite  separate  incident," 
said  Mrs.  Gosselin. 

"/loathed  their  artifice,  harmless  as  it 
was  !"  her  son  observed. 

Mrs.  Gosselin  for  a  moment  made  no  an- 
swer ;  then  she  turned  away  from  the  fire, 
into  which  she  had  been  pensively  gazing, 
with  the  ejaculation,  "  Poor  dear  Guy  !" 

"  I  can't  for  the  life  of  me  see  that  he's  to 
be  pitied." 

"  He'll  marry  Charlotte  Firminger." 

"  If  he's  such  an  ass  as  that,  it's  his  own 
affair." 

"  Bessie  Whiteroy  will  bring  it  about." 

"  What  has  she  to  do  with  it  ?" 

"  She  wants  to  get  hold  of  him." 

"  Then  why  will  she  marry  him  to  another 
woman  ?" 

"  Because  in  that  way  she  can  select  the 
other — a  woman  he  won't  care  for.  It  will 
keep  him  from  taking  some  one  that's  nicer." 

Hugh  Gosselin  stared — he  laughed  aloud. 
"  Lord,  mamma,  you're  deep  !" 

"  Indeed  I  am.     I  see  much  more." 

"  What  do  you  see  ?" 

13 


I94  LORD    EEAUPRE 

"  Mary  won't  in  the  least  care  for  Ameri- 
ca. Don't  tell  me  she  will,"  Mrs.  Gosselin 
added,  "  for  you  know  perfectly  you  don't 
believe  it." 

"  She'll  care  for  her  husband,  she'll  care 
for  everything  that  concerns  him." 

"  He's  very  nice ;  in  his  little  way  he's  de- 
lightful. But  as  an  alternative  to'  Lord 
Beaupre,  he's  ridiculous !" 

"  Mary's  in  a  position  in  which  she  has 
nothing  to  do  with  alternatives." 

"  For  the  present,  yes,  but  not  forever. 
She'll  have  enough  of  your  New  York; 
they'll  come  back  here.  I  see  the  future 
dark,"  Mrs.  Gosselin  pursued,  inexorably 
musing. 

"  Tell  me,  then,  all  you  see." 

"  She'll  find  poor  Guy  wretchedly  mar- 
ried, and  she'll  be  very  sorry  for  him." 

"Do  you  mean  that  he'll  make  love  to 
her  ?  You  give  a  queer  account  of  your 
paragon." 

"  He'll  value  her  sympathy.  I  see  life  as 
it  is." 

"You  give  a  queer  account  of  your 
daughter." 


LORD    BEAUPRE  195 

"  I  don't  give  any  account.  She'll  behave 
perfectly,"  Mrs.  Gosselin  somewhat  inconse- 
quently  subjoined. 

"  Then  what  are  you  afraid  of  ?" 

"  She'll  be  sorry  for  him,  and  it  will  be 
all  a  worry." 

"  A  worry  to  whom  ?" 

The  good  lady  was  silent  a  moment. 
"To  me,"  she  replied.  "And  to  you  as 
well." 

"Then  they  mustn't  come  back." 

"  That  will  be  a  greater  worry  still." 

"  Surely  not  a  greater — a  smaller.  We'll 
put  up  with  the  lesser  evil." 

"Nothing  will  prevent  her  coming  to  a 
sense,  eventually,  of  what  might  have  been. 
And  when  they  both  recognize  it — " 

"  It  will  be  very  dreadful !"  Hugh  ex- 
claimed, completing  gayly  his  mother's 
phrase.  "  I  don't  see,  however,"  he  added, 
"what  in  all  this  you  do  with  Bessie  White- 
roy." 

"Oh,  he'll  be  tired  of  her;  she's  hard, 
she'll  have  become  despotic.  I  see  life  as 
it  is,"  the  good  lady  repeated. 

"Then  all  I  can  say  is  that  it's  not  very 


ig6  LORD    BEAUPRE 

nice  !  But  they  shaVt  come  back ;  /'ll  at- 
tend to  that !"  said  Hugh  Gosselin,  who  has 
attended  to  it  up  to  this  time  successfully, 
though  the  rest  of  his  mother's  prophecy 
is  so  far  accomplished  (it  was  her  second 
hit)  as  that  Charlotte  Firminger  is  now, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  Lady  Beaupre. 


THE   VISITS 


THE   VISITS 

THE  other/day,  after  her  death,  when  they 
were  discussing  her,  some  one  said,  in  refer- 
ence to  the  great  number  of  years  she  had 
lived,  the  people  she  had  seen,  and  the  sto- 
ries she  knew,  "What  a  pity  no  one  ever 
took  any  notes  of  her  talk  !"  For  a  London 
epitaph  that  was  almost  exhaustive,  and  the 
subject  presently  changed.  One  of  the  lis- 
teners had  taken  many  notes,  but  he  didn't 
confess  it  on  the  spot.  The  following  story 
is  a  specimen  of  my  exactitude  —  I  took  it 
down  verbatim,  having  that  faculty,  the  day 
after  I  heard  it.  I  choose  it,  at  hazard, 
among  those  of  her  reminiscences  that  I 
have  preserved  ;  it's  not  worse  than  the  oth- 
ers. I  will  give  you  some  of  the  others  too — 
when  occasion  offers — so  that  you  may  judge. 

I  met  in  town  that  year  a  dear  woman 
whom  I  had  scarcely  seen  since  I  was  a 


200  THE    VISITS 

girl ;  she  had  dropped  out  of  the  world ;  she 
came  up  but  once  in  five  years.  We  had 
been  together  as  very  young  creatures,  and 
then  we  had  married  and  gone  our  ways. 
It  was  arranged  between  us  that  after  I 
should  have  paid  a  certain  visit  in  August 
in  the  west  of  England  I  would  take  her  — 
it  would  be  very  convenient,  she  was  just 
over  the  Cornish  border — on  the  way  to  my 
other  engagements ;  I  would  work  her  in, 
as  you  say  nowadays.  She  wanted  im- 
mensely to  show  me  her  home,  and  she 
wanted  still  more  to  show  me  her  girl,  who 
had  not  come  up  to  London,  choosing  in- 
stead, after  much  deliberation,  to  go  abroad 
for  a  month  with  her  brother  and  her  broth- 
er's coach — he  had  been  cramming  for  some- 
thing— and  Mrs.  Coach  of  course.  All  that 
Mrs.  Chantry  had  been  able  to  show  me  in 
town  was  her  husband,  one  of  those  country 
gentlemen  with  a  moderate  property  and  an 
old  place,  who  are  a  part  of  the  essence  in 
their  own  neighborhood  and  not  a  part  of 
anything  anywhere  else. 

A    couple    of    days    before   my  visit  to 
Chantry  Court  the  people  to  whom  I  had 


THE   VISITS  201 

gone  from  town  took  me  over  to  see  some 
friends  of  theirs,  who  lived  ten  miles  away 
in  a  place  that  was  supposed  to  be  fine. 
As  it  was  a  long  drive  we  stayed  to  lunch- 
eon ;  and  then,  as  there  were  gardens  and 
other  things  that  were  more  or  less  on  show, 
we  struggled  along  to  tea,  so  as  to  get  home 
just  in  time  for  dinner.  There  were  a  good 
many  other  people  present,  and  before 
luncheon  a  very  pretty  girl  came  into  the 
drawing-room,  a  real  maiden  in  her  flower, 
less  than  twenty,  fresh  and  fair  and  charm- 
ing, with  the  expression  of  some  one  I  knew. 
I  asked  who  she  was,  and  was  told  she  was 
Miss  Chantry,  so  that  in  a  moment  I  spoke 
to  her,  mentioning  that  I  was  an  old  friend 
of  her  mother's,  and  that  I  was  coming  to 
pay  them  a  visit.  She  looked  rather  fright- 
ened and  blank,  was  apparently  unable  to 
say  that  she  had  ever  heard  of  me,  and 
hinted  at  no  pleasure  in  the  idea  that  she 
was  to  hear  of  me  again.  But  this  didn't 
prevent  my  perceiving  that  she  was  lovely, 
for  I  was  wise  enough  even  then  not  to 
think  it  necessary  to  measure  people  by  the 
impression  that  one  makes  on  them.  I  saw 


202  THE   VISITS 

that  any  I  should  make  on  Louisa  Chantry 
would  be  much  too  clumsy  a  test.  She  had 
been  staying  at  the  house  at  which  I  was 
calling ;  she  had  come  alone,  as  the  people 
were  old  friends  and,  to  a  certain  extent, 
neighbors,  and  was  going  home  in  a  few 
days.  It  was  a  daughterless  house,  but 
there  was  inevitable  young  life  ;  a  couple  of 
girls  from  the  vicarage,  a  married  son  and 
his  wife,  a  young  man  who  had  "  ridden 
over,"  and  another  young  man  who  was 
staying. 

Louisa  Chantry  sat  opposite  to  me  at 
luncheon,  but  too  far  for  conversation,  and 
before  we  got  up  I  had  discovered  that  if 
her  manner  to  me  had  been  odd,  it  was  not 
because  she  was  inanimate.  She  was,  on  the 
contrary,  in  a  state  of  intense  though  care- 
fully muffled  vibration.  There  was  some 
fever  in  her  blood,  but  no  one  perceived 
it  —  no  one,  that  is,  with  an  exception — 
an  exception  which  was  just  a  part  of  the 
very  circumstance.  This  single  suspicion 
was  lodged  in  the  breast  of  the  young  man 
whom  I  have  alluded  to  as  staying  in  the 
house.  He  was  on  the  same  side  of  the 


THE    VISITS  203 

table  as  myself  and  diagonally  facing  the 
girl  •  therefore  what  I  learned  about  him 
was  for  the  moment  mainly  what  she  told 
me ;  meaning  by  "  she  "  her  face,  her  eyes, 
her  movements,  her  whole  perverted  person- 
ality. She  was  extremely  on  her  guard,  and 
I  should  never  have  guessed  her  secret  but 
for  an  accident.  The  accident  was  that  the 
only  time  she  dropped  her  eyes  upon  him 
during  the  repast  I  happened  to  notice  it. 
It  might  not  have  been  much  to  notice,  but 
it  led  to  my  seeing  that  there  was  a  little 
drama  going  on,  and  that  the  young  man 
would  naturally  be  the  hero.  It  was  equal- 
ly natural  that  in  this  capacity  he  should 
be  the  cause  of  my  asking  my  left-hand 
neighbor,  who  happened  to  be  my  host,  for 
some  account  of  him.  But  "  Oh,  that  fel- 
low ?  he's  my  nephew,"  was  a  description 
which,  to  appear  copious,  required  that  I 
should  know  more  about  the  uncle. 

We  had  coffee  on  the  terrace  of  the 
house ;  a  terrace  laid  out  in  one  quarter, 
oddly  and  charmingly,  in  grass,  where  the 
servants  who  waited  upon  us  seemed  to 
tread,  processionally,  on  soundless  velvet. 


204  THE   VISITS 

There  I  had  a  good  look  at  my  host's 
nephew  and  a  longer  talk  with  my  friend's 
daughter,  in  regard  to  whom  I  had  become 
conscious  of  a  faint  formless  anxiety.  I  re- 
member saying  to  her,  gropingly,  instinct- 
ively :  "  My  dear  child,  can  I  do  anything 
for  you  ?  I  shall,  perhaps,  see  your  mother 
before  you  do.  Can  I,  for  instance,  say 
anything  to  her  from  you  ?"  This  only 
made  her  blush  and  turn  away ;  and  it  was 
not  till  too  many  days  had  passed  that  I 
guessed  that  what  had  looked  out  at  me 
unwittingly  in  her  little  gazing  trepidation 
was  something  like,  "  Oh,  just  take  me  away 
in  spite  of  myself !"  Superficially,  conspic- 
uously, there  was  nothing  in  the  young  man 
to  take  her  away  from.  He  was  a  person 
of  the  middle  condition,  and,  save  that  he 
didn't  look  at  all  humble,  might  have  passed 
for  a  poor  relation.  I  mean  that  he  had 
rather  a  seedy,  shabby  air,  as  if  he  were 
wearing  out  old  clothes  (he  had  on  faded 
things  that  didn't  match) ;  and  I '  formed 
vaguely  the  theory  that  he  was  a  specimen 
of  the  numerous  youthful  class  that  goes  to 
seek  its  fortune  in  the  colonies,  keeps 


THE   VISITS  205 

strange  company  there,  and  comes  home 
without  a  penny.  He  had  a  brown,  smooth, 
handsome  face,  a  slightly  swaggering,  self- 
conscious  ease,  and  was  probably  objected 
to  in  the  house.  He  hung  about,  smoking 
cigarettes  on  the  terrace,  and  nobody  seemed 
to  have  much  to  say  to  him — a  circumstance 
which,  as  he  managed  somehow  to  convey, 
left  him  absolutely  indifferent.  Louisa 
Chantry  strolled  away  with  one  of  the  girls 
from  the  vicarage ;  the  party  on  the  terrace 
broke  up,  and  the  nephew  disappeared. 

It  was  settled  that  my  friends  and  I 
should  take  leave  at  half -past  five,  and 
I  begged  to  be  abandoned  in  the  interval 
to  my  devices.  I  turned  into  the  library 
and,  mounted  on  ladders,  I  handled  old 
books  and  old  prints  and  soiled  my  gloves. 
Most  of  the  others  had  gone  to  look  at  the 
church,  and  I  was  left  in  possession.  I 
wandered  into  the  rooms  in  which  I  knew 
there  were  pictures  ;  and  if  the  pictures  were 
not  good,  there  was  some  interesting  china, 
which  I  followed  from  corner  to  corner  and 
from  cabinet  to  cabinet.  At  last  I  found 
myself  on  the  threshold  of  a  small  room 


206  THE   VISITS 

which  appeared  to  terminate  the  series,  and 
in  which,  between  the  curtains  draping  the 
doorways,  there  appeared  to  be  rows  of  rare 
old  plates  on  velvet  screens.  I  was  on  the 
point  of  going  in  when  I  became  aware  that 
there  was  something  else  besides,  something 
which  threw  me  back.  Two  persons  were 
standing  side  by  side  at  the  window,  looking 
out  together  with  their  backs  to  me — two 
persons  as  to  whom  I  immediately  felt  that 
they  believed  themselves  to  be  alone  and 
unwatched.  One  of  them  was  Louisa  Chan- 
try, the  other  was  the  young  man  whom 
my  host  had  described  as  his  nephew. 
They  were  so  placed  as  not  to  see  me,  and 
when  I  recognized  them  I  checked  myself 
instinctively.  I  hesitated  a  moment;  then 
I  turned  away  altogether.  I  can't  tell  you 
why,  except  that  if  I  had  gone  in  I  should 
have  had  somehow  the  air  of  discovering 
them.  There  was  no  visible  reason  why 
they  should  have  been  embarrassed  by  dis- 
covery, inasmuch  as,  so  far  as  I  could  see, 
they  were  doing  no  harm,  were  only  stand- 
ing more  or  less  together,  without  touching, 
and  for  the  moment  apparently  saying  noth- 


THE    VISITS  207 

ing.  Were  they  watching  something  out  of 
the  window  ?  I  don't  know ;  all  I  know  is 
that  the  observation  I  had  made  at  lunch- 
eon gave  me  a  sense  of  responsibility.  I 
might  have  taken  my  responsibility  the  oth- 
er way  and  broken  up  their  communion  ; 
but  I  didn't  feel  this  to  be  sufficiently  my 
business.  Later  on  I  wished  I  had. 

I  passed  through  the  rooms  again,  and 
then  out  of  the  house.  The  gardens  were 
ingenious,  but  they  made  me  think  (I  have 
always  that  conceited  habit)  how  much 
cleverer  /  should  have  been  about  them. 
Presently  I  met  several  of  the  rest  of  the 
party  coming  back  from  the  church ;  on 
which  my  hostess  took  possession  of  me, 
declaring  there  was  a  point  of  view  I  must 
absolutely  be  treated  to.  I  saw  she  was  a 
walking  woman,  and  that  this  meant  half  a 
mile  in  the  park.  But  I  was  good  for  that, 
and  we  wandered  off  together  while  the 
others  returned  to  the  house.  It  was  pres- 
ent to  me  that  I  ought  to  ask  my  compan- 
ion, for  Helen  Chantry's  sake,  a  question 
about  Louisa  —  whether,  for  instance,  she 
had  happened  to  notice  the  way  the  girl 


208  THE   VISITS 

seemed  to  be  going.  But  it  was  difficult  to 
say  anything  without  saying  too  much ;  so 
that,  to  begin  with,  I  merely  risked  the  ob- 
servation that  our  young  friend  was  remark- 
ably pretty.  As  the  point  admitted  of  no 
discussion,  this  didn't  take  us  very  far ;  nor 
was  the  subject  much  enlarged  by  our  una- 
nimity as  to  the  fact  that  she  was  also 
remarkably  nice.  I  observed  that  I  had 
had  very  little  chance  to  talk  with  her,  for 
which  I  was  sorry,  having  known  her  mother 
for  years.  My  hostess  at  this  looked  vaguely 
round,  as  if  she  had  missed  her  for  the  first 
time.  "  Sure  enough,  she  has  not  been 
about.  I  dare  say  she's  been  writing  to  her 
mother  —  she's  always  writing  to  her  moth- 
er." "Not  always,"  I  mentally  reflected;  but 
I  waited  discreetly,  admiring  everything  and 
rising  to  the  occasion  and  the  views,  before 
I  inquired  casually  who  the  young  man 
might  be  who  had  sat  two  or  three  below 
me  at  luncheon — the  rather  good-looking 
young  man,  with  the  regular  features  and 
the  brownish  clothes — not  the  one  with  the 
mustache. 

"  Oh,  poor  Jack  Brandon  !"  said  my  com- 


THE   VISITS  209 

pardon,  in  a  tone  calculated  to  make  him 
seem  no  one  in  particular. 

"  Is  he  very  poor  ?"  I  asked,  with  a  laugh. 

"  Oh,  dear,  yes.  There  are  nine  of  them 
— fancy  ! — all  boys  ;  and  there's  nothing  for 
any  one  but  the  eldest.  He's  my  husband's 
nephew — his  poor  mother's  my  sister-in-law. 
He  sometimes  turns  up  here  when  he  has 
nothing  better  to  do  ;  but  I  don't  think  he 
likes  us  much."  I  saw  she  meant  that  they 
didn't  like  him;  and  I  exposed  myself  to 
suspicion  by  asking  if  he  had  been  with 
them  long;  but  my  friend  was  not  very 
plastic,  and  she  simplified  my  whole  theo- 
ry of  the  case  by  replying,  after  she  had 
thought  a  moment,  that  she  wasn't  clear 
about  it — she  thought  he  had  come  only  the 
morning  before.  It  seemed  to  me  I  could 
safely  feel  a  little  further,  so  I  inquired  if 
he  were  likely  to  stay  many  days.  "  Oh 
dear,  no ;  he'll  go  to-morrow !"  said  my 
hostess.  There  was  nothing  whatever  to 
show  that  she  saw  a  connection  between  my 
odd  interest  in  Mr.  Brandon  and  the  sub- 
ject of  our  former  reference ;  there  was  only 
a  quick  lucidity  on  the  subject  of  the  young 


210  THE    VISITS 

man's  departure.  It  reassured  me,  for  no 
great  complications  would  have  arisen  in 
forty-eight  hours. 

In  retracing  our  steps  we  passed  again 
through  a  part  of  the  gardens.  Just  after 
we  had  entered  them  my  hostess,  begging 
me  to  excuse  her,  called  at  a  man  who  was 
raking  leaves  to  ask  him  a  question  about 
his  wife.  I  heard  him  reply,  "  Oh,  she's 
very  bad,  my  lady,"  and  I  followed  my 
course.  Presently  my  lady  turned  round 
with  him,  as  if  to  go  to  see  his  wife,  who  ap- 
parently was  ill  and  on  the  place.  I  con- 
tinued to  look  about  me  —  there  were  such 
charming  things ;  and  at  the  end  of  five 
minutes  I  missed  my  way — I  had  not  taken 
the  direction  of  the  house.  Suddenly  at  the 
turn  of  a  walk,  the  angle  of  a  great  clipped 
hedge,  I  found  myself  face  to  face  with  Jack 
Brandon.  He  was  moving  rapidly,  looking 
down,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  and 
he  started  and  stared  at  me  a  moment.  I 
said,  "  Oh,  how  d'ye  do  ?"  and  I  was  on  the 
point  of  adding,  "Won't  you  kindly  show  me 
the  right  way  ?"  But  with  a  summary  sa- 
lute and  a  queer  expression  of  face  he  had 


THE    VISITS  211 

already  passed  me.  I  looked  after  him  an 
instant  and  I  all  but  stopped  him;  then  one 
of  the  faintest  voices  of  the  air  told  me  that 
Louisa  Chantry  would  not  be  far  off,  that, 
in  fact,  if  I  were  to  go  on  a  few  steps  I 
should  find  her.  I  continued,  and  I  passed 
through  an  arched  aperture  of  the  hedge,  a 
kind  of  door  in  the  partition.  This  corner 
of  the  place  was  like  an  old  French  garden, 
a  little  enclosed  apartment,  with  statues  set 
into  the  niches  of  the  high  walls  of  verdure. 
I  paused  in  admiration ;  then  just  opposite 
to  me  I  saw  poor  Louisa.  She  was  on  a 
bench,  with  her  hands  clasped  in  her  lap, 
her  head  bent,  her  eyes  staring  down  before 
her.  I  advanced  on  the  grass,  attracting 
her  attention ;  and  I  was  close  to  her  before 
she  looked  at  me,  before  she  sprang  up  and 
showed  me  a  face  convulsed  with  nameless 
pain.  She  was  so  pale  that  I  thought  she 
was  ill  —  I  had  a  vision  of  her  companion's 
having  rushed  off  for  help.  She  stood  gaz- 
ing at  me  with  expanded  eyes  and  parted 
lips,  and  what  I  was  mainly  conscious  of  was 
that  she  had  become  ten  years  older.  What- 
ever troubled  her,  it  was  something  pitiful — 


212  THE    VISITS 

something  that  prompted  me  to  hold  out  my 
two  hands  to  her  and  exclaim,  tenderly,  "My 
poor  child,  my  poor  child !"  She  wavered 
a  moment,  as  if  she  wanted  to  escape  me 
but  couldn't  trust  herself  to  run  •  she  looked 
away  from  me,  turning  her  head  this  way 
and  that.  Then,  as  I  went  close  to  her,  she 
covered  her  face  with  her  two  hands,  she  let 
me  lay  mine  upon  her  and  draw  her  to  my 
breast.  As  she  dropped  her  head  upon  it 
she  burst  into  tears,  sobbing  soundlessly 
and  tragically.  I  asked  her  no  question,  I 
only  held  her  so  long  as  she  would,  letting 
her  pour  out  the  passion  which  I  felt  at  the 
same  time  she  made  a  tremendous  effort  to 
smother.  She  couldn't  smother  it,  but  she 
could  break  away  violently;  and  this  she 
quickly  did,  hurrying  out  of  the  nook  where 
our  little  scene  —  and  some  other  greater 
scene,  I  judged,  just  before  it  —  had  taken 
place,  and  leaving  me  infinitely  mystified. 
I  sat  down  on  the  bench  a  moment  and 
thought  it  over ;  then  I  succeeded  in  dis- 
covering a  path  to  the  house. 

The  carnage  was  at  the  door  for  our  drive 
home,  but  my  companions,  who  had  had  tea, 


THE   VISITS  213 

were  waiting  for  our  hostess,  of  whom  they 
wished  to  take  leave,  and  who  had  not  yet 
come  in.  I  reported  her  as  engaged  with  the 
wife  of  one  of  the  gardeners,  but  we  lingered 
a  little  in  the  hall,  a  largeish  group,  to  give 
her  time  to  arrive.  Two  other  persons  were 
absent,  one  of  whom  was  Louisa  Chantry 
and  the  other  the  young  man  whom  I  had 
just  seen  quitting  her  in  the  garden.  While 
I  sat  there,  a  trifle  abstracted,  still  some- 
what agitated  by  the  sequel  to  that  incident 
and  at  the  same  time  impatient  of  our  last 
vague  dawdle,  one  of  the  footmen  presented 
me  with  a  little  folded  note.  I  turned  away 
to  open  it,  and  at  the  very  moment  our 
hostess  fortunately  came  in.  This  diverted 
the  attention  of  the  others  from  the  action 
of  the  footman,  whom,  after  I  had  looked  at 
the  note,  I  immediately  followed  into  the 
drawing-room.  He  led  me  through  it  and 
through  two  or  three  others  to  the  door  of 
the  little  retreat  in  which,  nearly  an  hour 
before,  I  had  come  upon  Louisa  Chantry 
and  Mr.  Brandon.  The  note  was  from  Lou- 
isa ;  .it  contained  the  simple  words :  "  Would 
you  very  kindly  speak  to  me  an  instant  be- 


214  THE 

fore  you  go  ?"  She  was  waiting  for  me  in 
the  most  sequestered  spot  she  had  been 
able  to  select,  and  there  the  footman  left 
us.  The  girl  came  straight  at  me  and  in  an 
instant  she  had  grasped  my  hands.  I  be- 
came aware  that  her  condition  had  changed; 
her  tears  were  gone,  she  had  a  concen- 
trated purpose.  I  could  scarcely  see  her 
beautiful  young  face  —  it  was  pressed,  be- 
seechingly, so  close  to  mine.  I  only  felt, 
as  her  dry,  shining  eyes  almost  dazzled 
me,  that  a  strong  light  had  been  waved 
back  and  forth  before  me.  Her  words  at 
first  seemed  to  me  incoherent ;  then  I  un- 
derstood that  she  was  asking  me  for  a 
pledge. 

"  Excuse  me,  forgive  me  for  bringing  you 
here  —  to  say  something  I  can't  say  before 
all  those  people.  Do  forgive  me — it  was  so 
awfully  kind  of  you  to  come.  I  couldn't 
think  of  any  other  way  —  just  for  two  sec- 
onds. I  want  you  to  swear  to  me,"  she 
went  on,  with  her  hands  now  raised  and 
intensely  clasped. 

"  To  swear,  dearest  child  ?" 

"  I'm   not   your   dearest   child — I'm  not 


THE    VISITS  215 

any  one's !  But  dorit  tell  mamma.  Promise 
me — promise  me,"  she  insisted. 

"  Tell  her  what  ?— I  don't  understand." 

"Oh,  you  do  —  you  do!"  she  kept  on; 
"  and  if  you're  going  to  Chantry  you'll  see 
her,  you'll  be  with  her,  you  may  see  her  be- 
fore I  do.  On  my  knees  I  ask  you  for  a 
vow !" 

She  seemed  on  the  point  of  throwing  her- 
self at  my  feet,  but  I  stopped  her.  I  kept 
her  erect.  "  When  shall  you  see  your  moth- 
er?" 

"As  soon  as  I  can.  I  want  to  get  home— 
I  want  to  get  home !"  With  this  I  thought 
she  was  going  to  cry  again,  but  she  controlled 
herself  and  only  pressed  me  with  feverish 
eyes. 

"You  have  some  great  trouble.  For 
Heaven's  sake,  tell  me  what  it  is." 

"It  isn't  anything  —  it  will  pass.  Only 
don't  breathe  it  to  mamma !" 

"How  can  I  breathe  it  if  I  don't  know 
what  it  is  ?" 

"  You  do  know — you  know  what  I  mean." 
Then,  after  an  instant's  pause,  she  added : 
"  What  I  did  in  the  garden." 


2i6  THE    VISITS 

"  What  did  you  do  in  the  garden  ?" 

"  I  threw  myself  on  your  neck  and  I  sobbed 
— I  behaved  like  a  maniac." 

"  Is  that  all  you  mean  ?" 

"  It's  what  I  don't  want  mamma  to  know — 
it's  what  I  beseech  you  to  keep  silent  about. 
If  you  don't,  I'll  never,  never  go  home. 
Have  mercy  on  me  !"  the  poor  child  qua- 
vered. 

"  Dear  girl,  I  only  want  to  be  tender  to 
you — to  be  perfect.  But  tell  me  first,  has 
any  one  acted  wrongly  to  you  ?" 

"  No  one — no  one.     I  speak  the  truth." 

She  looked  into  my  eyes,  and  I  looked 
far  into  hers.  They  were  wild  with  pain, 
and  yet  they  were  so  pure  that  they  made 
me  confusedly  believe  her.  I  hesitated  a 
moment ;  then  I  risked  the  question  :  "  Isn't 
Mr.  Brandon  responsible  for  anything?" 

"  For  nothing — for  nothing !  Don't  blame 
him  /"  the  girl  passionately  cried. 

"  He  hasn't  made  love  to  you  !" 

"  Not  a  word — before  God !  Oh,  it  was 
too  awful !"  And  with  this  she  broke  away 
from  me,  flung  herself  on  her  knees  before  a 
sofa,  burying  her  face  in  it  and  in  her  arms. 


THE   VISITS  217 

"  Promise  me,  promise  me,  promise  me !" 
she  continued  to  wail. 

I  was  horribly  puzzled,  but  I  was  im- 
measurably touched.  I  stood  looking  a  mo- 
ment at  her  extravagant  prostration;  then  I 
said,  "I'm  dreadfully  in  the  dark,  but  I 
promise." 

This  brought  her  to  her  feet  again,  and 
again  she  seized  my  hands.  "  Solemnly, 
sacredly  ?"  she  panted. 

"  Solemnly,  sacredly." 

"  Not  a  syllable— not  a  hint  ?" 

"  Dear  Louisa,"  I  said,  kindly,  "  when  I 
promise  I  perform." 

"You  see  I  don't  know  you.  And  when 
do  you  go  to  Chantry?" 

"Day  after  to-morrow.  And  when  do 
you  ?" 

"To-morrow,  if  I  can." 

"  Then  you'll  see  your  mother  first  —  it 
will  be  all  right,"  I  said,  smiling. 

"  All  right,  all  right !"  she  repeated,  with 
her  woful  eyes.  "  Go,  go  !"  she  added,  hear- 
ing a  step  in  the  adjoining  room. 

The  footman  had  come  back  to  announce 
that  my  friends  were  seated  in  the  carriage, 


2i8  THE    VISITS 

and  I  was  careful  to  say  before  him  in  a 
different  tone  :  "  Then  there's  nothing  more 
I  can  do  for  you  ?" 

"  Nothing — good-bye,"  said  Louisa,  tear- 
ing herself  away  too  abruptly  to  take  my 
kiss,  which,  to  follow  the  servant  again,  I 
left  unbestowed.  I  felt  awkward  and  guilty 
as  I  took  leave  of  the  company,  murmuring 
something  to  my  entertainers  about  having 
had  an  arrangement  to  make  with  Miss  Chan- 
try. Most  of  the  people  bade  us  good-bye 
from  the  steps,  but  I  didn't  see  Jack  Bran- 
don. On  our  drive  home  in  the  waning  after- 
noon my  other  friends  doubtless  found  me 
silent  and  stupid. 

I  went  to  Chantry  two  days  later,  and  was 
disappointed  to  find  that  the  daughter  of 
the  house  had  not  returned,  though  indeed 
after  parting  with  her  I  had  been  definitely 
of  the  opinion  that  she  was  much  more  likely 
to  go  to  bed  and  be  ill.  Her  mother,  how- 
ever, had  not  heard  that  she  was  ill,  and  my 
inquiry  about  the  young  lady  was  of  course 
full  of  circumspection.  It  was  a  little  diffi- 
cult, for  I  had  to  talk  about  her,  Helen  be- 
ing particularly  delighted  that  we  had  already 


THE    VISITS 


2I9 


made  acquaintance.  No  day  had  been  fixed 
for  her  return,  but  it  came  over  my  friend 
that  she  oughtn't  to  be  absent  during  too 
much  of  my  visit.  She  was  the  best  thing 
they  had  to  show — she  was  the  flower  and 
the  charm  of  the  place.  It  had  other  charms 
as  well — it  was  a  sleepy,  silvery  old  home, 
exquisitely  gray  and  exquisitely  green  ;  a 
house  where  you  could  have  confidence  in 
your  leisure  ;  it  would  be  as  genuine  as  the 
butter  and  the  claret.  The  very  look  of  the 
pleasant,  prosaic  drawing-room  suggested 
long  mornings  of  fancy  work,  of  Berlin  wool 
and  premeditated  patterns,  new  stitches  and 
mild  pauses.  My  good  Helen  was  always 
in  the  middle  of  something  eternal,  of  which 
the  past  and  the  future  were  rolled  up  in 
oil-cloth  and  tissue-paper,  and  the  intensest 
moments  of  conversation  were  when  it  was 
spread  out  for  pensive  opinions.  These 
used  to  drop  sometimes  even  from  Christo- 
pher Chantry  when  he  straddled  vaguely 
in  with  muddy  leggings  and  the  raw  materi- 
als of  a  joke.  He  had  a  mind  like  a  large, 
full  milk-pan,  and  his  wit  was  as  thick  as 
cream. 


2€0  THE   VISITS 

One  evening  I  came  down  to  dinner  a  lit- 
tle early  and,  to  my  surprise,  found  my 
troubled  maiden  in  possession  of  the  draw- 
ing-room. She  was  evidently  troubled  still, 
and  had  been  waiting  there  in  the  hope  of 
seeing  me  alone.  We  were  too  quickly  inter- 
rupted by  her  parents,  however,  and  I  had 
no  conversation  with  her  till  I  sat  down  to 
the  piano  after  dinner  and  beckoned  to  her 
to  come  and  stand  by  it.  Her  father  had 
gone  off  to  smoke;  her  mother  dozed  by 
one  of  the  crackling  little  fires  of  the  sum- 
mer's end. 

"  Why  didn't  you  come  home  the  day  you 
told  me  you  meant  to  ?" 

She  fixed  her  eyes  on  my  hands.  "  I 
couldn't,  I  couldn't !" 

"  You  look  to  me  as  if  you  were  very  ill." 

"  I  am,"  the  girl  said,  simply. 

"  You  ought  to  see  some  one.  Something 
ought  to  be  done." 

She  shook  her  head  with  quiet  despair. 
"  It  would  be  no  use  —  no  one  would 
know." 

"What  do  you  mean — would  know?" 

"  No  one  would  understand." 


THE   VISITS  221 

"You  ought  to  make  them  !" 

"  Never — never !"  she  repeated.  "Never !" 

"  I  confess  /don't,"  I  replied,  with  a  kind 
of  angry  renunciation.  I  played  louder,  with 
the  passion  of  my  uneasiness  and  the  aggra- 
vation of  my  responsibility. 

"  No,  you  don't  indeed,"  said  Louisa 
Chantry. 

I  had  only  to  accept  this  disadvantage, 
and  after  a  moment  I  went  on  :  "  What  be- 
came of  Mr.  Brandon  ?" 

"  I  don't  know." 

"Did  he  go  away?" 

"  That  same  evening." 

"  Which  same  evening  ?" 

"  The  day  you  were  there.  I  never  saw 
him  again." 

I  was  silent  a  minute,  then  I  risked : 
"  And  you  never  will,  eh  ?" 

"  Never — never  !" 

"Then  why  shouldn't  you  get  better?" 

She  also  hesitated,  after  which  she  an- 
swered, "  Because  I'm  going  to  die." 

My  music  ceased  in  spite  of  me  and  we 
sat  looking  at  each  other.  Helen  Chantry 
woke  up  with  a  little  start  and  asked  what 


222  THE   VISITS 

was  the  matter.  I  rose  from  the  piano 
and  I  couldn't  help  saying,  "  Dear  Helen,  I 
haven't  the  least  idea."  Louisa  sprang  up, 
pressing  her  hand  to  her  left  side,  and  the 
next  instant  I  cried  aloud, "  She's  faint — she's 
ill — do  come  to  her  !"  Mrs.  Chantry  bustled 
over  to  us,  and  immediately  afterwards  the 
girl  had  thrown  herself  on  her  mother's 
breast,  as  she  had  thrown  herself  days  be- 
fore on  mine ;  only  this  time  without  tears, 
without  cries,  in  the  strangest,  most  tragic 
silence.  She  was  not  faint,  she  was  only 
in  despair — that  at  least  is  the  way  I  really 
saw  her.  There  was  something  in  her  con- 
tact that  scared  poor  Helen,  that  operated 
a  sudden  revelation  ;  I  can  see  at  this  hour 
the  queer,  frightened  look  she  gave  me  over 
Louisa's  shoulder.  The  girl,  however,  in  a 
moment  disengaged  herself,  declaring  that 
she  was  not  ill,  only  tired,  very  tired,  and 
wanted  to  go  to  bed.  "  Take  her,  take  her 
— go  with  her,"  I  said  to  her  mother ,  and 
I  pushed  them,  got  them  out  of  the  room, 
partly  to  cpnceal  my  own  trepidation.  A 
few  moments  after  they  had  gone  Chris- 
topher Chantry  came  in,  having  finished 


THE   VISITS  223 

his  cigar,  and  I  had  to  mention  to  him — to 
explain  their  absence — that  his  daughter 
was  so  very  fatigued  that  she  had  with- 
drawn under  her  mother's  superintendence. 
"Didn't  she  seem  done  up,  awfully  done 
up  ?  What  on  earth,  at  that  confounded 
place,  did  she  go  in  for  ?"  the  dear  man 
asked,  with  his  pointless  kindness.  I 
couldn't  tell  him  this  was  just  what  I  my- 
self wanted  to  know;  and  while  I  pretend- 
ed to  read  I  wondered  inextinguishably 
what  indeed  she  had  "  gone  in "  for.  It 
had  become  still  more  difficult  to  keep  my 
vow  than  I  had  expected ;  it  was  also 
very  difficult  that  evening  to  converse  with 
Christopher  Chantry.  His  wife's  continued 
absence  rendered  some  conversation  neces- 
sary; yet  it  had  the  advantage  of  making 
him  remark,  after  it  had  lasted  an  hour, 
that  he  must  go  to  see  what  was  the  mat- 
ter. He  left  me,  and  soon  afterwards  I 
betook  myself  to  my  room ;  bedtime  was 
elastic  in  the  early  sense  at  Chantry.  I 
knew  I  should  only  have  to  wait  a  while  for 
Helen  to  come  to  me,  and,  in  fact,  by  eleven 
o'clock  she  arrived. 


224  THE   VISITS 

"  She's  in  a  very  strange  state — some- 
thing happened  there." 

"  And  what  happened,  pray  ?" 

"  I  can't  make  out;  she  won't  tell  me." 

"  Then  what  makes  you  suppose  so  ?" 

"  She  has  broken  down  utterly ;  she  says 
there  was  something." 

"  Then  she  does  tell  you  ?" 

"  Not  a  bit.  She  only  begins,  and  then 
stops  short ;  she  says  it's  too  dreadful." 

"  Too  dreadful  ?" 

"  She  says  it's  horrible"  my  poor  friend 
murmured,  with  tears  in  her  eyes  and 
tragic  speculation  in  her  mild  maternal 
face. 

"  But  in  what  way  ?  Does  she  give  you 
no  facts,  no  clew  ?" 

"It  was  something  she  did." 

We  looked  at  each  other  a  moment. 
"  Did  ?"  I  echoed.  "  Did  to  whom  ?" 

"She  won't  tell  me — she  says  she  can't. 
She  tries  to  bring  it  out,  but  it  sticks  in  her 
throat." 

"  Nonsense.     She  did  nothing,"  I  said. 

"  What  could  she  do  ?"  Helen  asked,  gaz- 
ing at  me. 


THE   VISITS  225 

"  She's  ill,  she's  in  a  fever  ;  her  mind's 
wandering." 

"  So  I  say  to  her  father." 

"  And  what  does  she  say  to  him  ?" 

"Nothing — she  won't  speak  to  him.  He's 
with  her  now,  but  she  only  lies  there  letting 
him  hold  her  hand,  with  her  face  turned 
away  from  him  and  her  eyes  closed." 

"You  must  send  for  the  doctor  im- 
mediately." 

"  I've  already  sent  for  him." 

"  Should  you  like  me  to  sit  up  with  her  ?" 

"  Oh,  I'll  do  that !"  Helen  said.  Then 
she  asked,  "  But  if  you  were  there  the  other 
day,  what  did  you  see  ?" 

"Nothing  whatever,"  I  resolutely  an- 
swered. 

"  Really  nothing  ?" 

"  Really,  my  dear  child." 

"  But  was  there  nobody  there  who  could 
have  made  up  to  her  ?" 

I  hesitated  a  moment.  "My  poor  Helen, 
you  should  have  seen  them  !" 

"  She  wouldn't  look  at  anybody  that 
wasn't  remarkably  nice,"  Helen  mused. 

"Well — I  don't  want  to  abuse  your  friends 


226  THE    VISITS 

— but  nobody  was  remarkably  nice.  Believe 
me,  she  hasn't  looked  at  anybody,  and  noth- 
ing whatever  has  occurred.  She's  ill,  and 
it's  a  mere  morbid  fancy." 

"  It's  a  mere  morbid  fancy — "  Mrs.  Chan- 
try gobbled  down  this  formula.  I  felt  that 
I  was  giving  her  another  still  more  accept- 
able, and  which  she  as  promptly  adopted, 
when  I  added  that  Louisa  would  soon  get 
over  it. 

I  may  as  well  say  at  once  that  Louisa 
never  got  over  it.  There  followed  an  ex- 
traordinary week,  which  I  look  back  upon 
as  one  of  the  most  uncomfortable  of  my 
life.  The  doctor  had  something  to  say 
about  the  action  of  his  patient's  heart — it 
was  weak  and  slightly  irregular,  and  he  was 
anxious  to  learn  whether  she  had  lately 
been  exposed  to  any  violent  shock  or  emo- 
tion— but  he  could  give  no  name  to  the 
disorder  under  the  influence  of  which  she 
had  begun  unmistakably  to  sink.  She  lay 
on  the  sofa  in  her  room — she  refused  to 
go  to  bed,  and  in  the  absence  of  compli- 
cations it  was  not  insisted  on  —  utterly 
white,  weak,  and  abstracted,  shaking  her 


THE    VISITS 


227 


head  at  all  suggestions,  waving  away  all 
nourishment  save  the  infinitesimally  little 
that  enabled  her  to  stretch  out  her  hand 
from  time  to  time  (at  intervals  of  very  un- 
equal length)  and  begin,  "Mother,  mother!" 
as  if  she  were  mustering  courage  for  a 
supreme  confession.  The  courage  never 
came ;  she  was  haunted  by  a  strange  im- 
pulse to  speak,  which  in  turn  was  checked 
on  her  lips  by  some  deeper  horror  or  some 
stranger  fear.  She  seemed  to  seek  relief 
spasmodically  from  some  unforgetable  con- 
sciousness, and  then  to  find  the  greatest 
relief  of  all  in  impenetrable  silence.  I 
knew  these  things  only  from  her  mother, 
for  before  me  (I  went  gently  in  and  out  of 
her  room  two  or  three  times  a  day)  she 
gave  no  sign  whatever.  The  little  local 
doctor,  after  the  first  day,  acknowledged 
himself  at  sea,  and  expressed  a  desire  to 
consult  with  a  colleague  at  Exeter.  The 
colleague  journeyed  down  to  us  and  shuffled 
and  stammered;  he  recommended  an  appeal 
to  a  high  authority  in  London.  The  high 
authority  was  summoned  by  telegraph  and 
paid  us  a  flying  visit.  He  enunicated 


228  THE    VISITS 

the  valuable  opinion  that  it  was  a  very 
curious  case,  and  dropped  the  striking  re- 
mark that  in  so  charming  a  home  a  young 
lady  ought  to  bloom  like  a  flower.  The 
young  lady's  late  hostess  came  over,  but 
she  could  throw  no  light  on  anything;  all 
that  she  had  ever  noticed  was  that  Louisa 
had  seemed  "  rather  blue  "  for  a  day  or  two 
before  she  brought  her  visit  to  a  close. 
Our  days  were  dismal  enough  and  our 
nights  were  dreadful,  for  I  took  turns  with 
Helen  in  sitting  up  with  the  girl.  Chantry 
Court  itself  seemed  conscious  of  the  riddle 
that  made  its  chambers  ache ,  it  bowed  its 
gray  old  head  over  the  fate  of  its  daughter. 
The  people  who  had  been  coming  were 
put  off  ;  dinner  became  a  ceremony  enacted 
mainly  by  the  servants.  I  sat  alone  with 
Christopher  Chantry,  whose  honest  hair,  in 
his  mystification,  stuck  out  as  if  he  had 
been  overhauling  accounts.  My  hours  with 
Louisa  were  even  more  intensely  silent,  for 
she  almost  never  looked  at  me.  In  the 
watches  of  the  night,  however,  I  at  last  saw 
more  clearly  into  what  she  was  thinking  of. 
Once  when  I  caught  her  wan  eyes  resting 


THE    VISITS 


229 


upon  me  I  took  advantage  of  it  to  kneel 
down  by  her  bed  and  speak  to  her  with  the 
utmost  tenderness. 

"  If  you  can't  say  it  to  your  mother,  can 
you  say  it  perhaps  to  me  ?" 

She  gazed  at  me  for  some  time.  "  What 
does  it  matter  now — if  I'm  dying?" 

I  shook  my  head  and  smiled.  "  You 
won't  die  if  you  get  it  off  your  mind." 

"  You'd  be  cruel  to  him,"  she  said.  "  He's 
innocent — he's  innocent." 

"  Do  you  mean  you're  guilty  ?  What  trifle 
are  you  magnifying?" 

"Do  you  call  it  a  trifle—"  She  faltered 
and  paused. 

"  Certainly  I  do,  my  dear."  Then  I 
risked  a  great  stroke.  "  I've  often  done  it 
myself !" 

"  You  ?  Never,  never  !  I  was  cruel  to 
him,"  she  added. 

This  puzzled  me ,  I  couldn't  work  it 
into  my  conception.  "  How  were  you 
cruel ?" 

"  In  the  garden.  I  changed  suddenly,  I 
drove  him  away,  I  told  him  he  filled  me 
with  horror." 


230 


THE    VISITS 


"Why  did  you  do  that?" 

"  Because  my  shame  came  over  me." 

"Your  shame?" 

"What  I  had  done  in  the  house." 

"  And  what  had  you  done  ?" 

She  lay  a  few  moments  with  her  eyes 
closed,  as  if  she  were  living  it  over.  "  I 
broke  out  to  him,  I  told  him,"  she  began  at 
last.  But  she  couldn't  continue,  she  was 
powerless  to  utter  it. 

"  Yes,  I  know  what  you  told  him.  Mill- 
ions of  girls  have  told  young  men  that 
before." 

"  They've  been  asked,  they've  been  asked ! 
They  didn't  speak  first !  I  didn't  even  know 
him,  he  didn't  care  for  me,  I  had  seen  him 
for  the  first  time  the  day  before.  I  said 
strange  things  to  him,  and  he  behaved  like 
a  gentleman." 

"  Well  he  might !" 

"  Then,  before  he  could  turn  round,  when 
we  had  simply  walked  out  of  the  house  to- 
gether and  strolled  in  the  garden — it  was  as 
if  I  were  borne  along  in  the  air  by  the 
wonder  of  what  I  had  said — it  rolled  over 
me  that  I  was  lost." 


THE    VISITS  231 

"  Lost  ?" 

"  That  I  had  been  horrible  —  that  I  had 
been  mad.  Nothing  could  ever  unsay  it.  I 
frightened  him — I  almost  struck  him." 

"  Poor  fellow  !"  I  smiled. 

"  Yes — pity  him.  He  was  kind.  But  he'll 
see  me  that  way — always  !" 

I  hesitated  as  to  the  answer  it  was  best 
to  make  to  this  ;  then  I  proceeded :  "  Don't 
think  he'll  remember  you — he'll  see  other 
girls." 

"Ah,  he'll  forget  me!"  she  softly  and 
miserably  wailed ;  and  I  saw  that  I  had 
said  the  wrong  thing.  I  bent  over  her 
more  closely  to  kiss  her,  and  when  I  raised 
my  head  her  mother  was  on  the  other 
side  of  the  bed.  She  fell  on  her  knees 
there  for  the  same  purpose,  and  when 
Louisa  felt  her  lips  she  stretched  out  her 
arms  to  embrace  her.  She  had  the  strength 
to  draw  her  close,  and  I  heard  her  begin 
again,  for  the  hundredth  time,  "  Mother, 
mother — 

"  Yes,  my  own  darling." 

Then  for  the  hundredth  time  I  heard  her 
stop.  There  was  an  intensity  in  her  silence. 


232  THE    VISITS 

It  made  me  wildly  nervous ;  I  got  up  and 
turned  away. 

"Mother,  mother!"  the  girl  repeated,  and 
poor  Helen  replied  with  a  sound  of  passion- 
ate solicitation.  But  her  daughter  only  ex- 
haled in  the  waiting  hush,  while  I  stood  at 
the  window  where  the  dawn  was  faint,  the 
most  miserable  moan  in  the  world.  "I'm 
dying  !"  she  said,  articulately ;  and  she  died 
that  night,  after  an  hour,  unconscious.  The 
doctor  arrived  almost  at  the  moment ,  this 
time  he  was  sure  it  must  have  been  the 
heart.  The  poor  parents  were  in  stupefac- 
tion, and  I  gave  up  half  my  visits  and 
stayed  with  them  a  month.  But  in  spite  of 
their  stupefaction  I  kept  my  vow. 


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By  HENRY  JAMES. 


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